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'J- 



MONCUKE D. CONWAY 
ADDRESSES AND REPRINTS 



MONCURE D. CONWAY 



ADDRESSES AND REPRINTS 
1850-1907 



Published and unpublished work 

representing the literary and 

philosophical life of 

the author 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

(^\^t Wazxiitt pre# Cambriti0e 

1909 






COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY EUSTACE CONWAY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published June iqog 



LIBRARY of Congress 

Two Cooies Received 

JUN 12 \m% 

Coi:yriifnt Entry 



It Entry 
XXC No 









CONTENTS 

Introduction vii 

Free Schools in Virginia (1850) 1 

The Golden Hour (1862) 57 



I. Point of Perspective 
II. In Chancery ..... 

III. In Common Law .... 

IV. Military Necessity .... 
V. The Two Edges of the Sword 

VI. Fighting the Devil with Fire . 
VII. Liberty's Legitimate Weapon 
VIIL The Gradual Plan .... 
IX. War for the Union 
X. How to hitch our Wagon to a Star . 
XL Through Self-Conquest to Conquest 
XII. A Post-Prandial Point . 

XIII. The Probabilities of Insurrection . 

XIV. Mercy, and not Sacrifice . 
XV. The Consecration of Heroism 

XVL A Possible Babylon . 
XVII. The Dial of Growths . 
XVIII. The Golden Hour .... 

XIX. The Negro 

XX. To the President of the United States 
XXL Sursum Corda .... 



61 

. 62 
66 

. 76 
80 

. 84 
89 

. 97 
101 

. 105 
108 

. 114 
117 

. 121 
127 

, 131 
138 
146 
154 
159 
173 



vi CONTENTS 

The Earthward Pilgrimage (1870) 187 

How I left the World to Come for that which Is . . 189 

The Church Auction 197 

St. Alban's 203 

An Old Shrine 207 

Zaiiberpfeife 218 

BunhiU Fields 221 

An English Sinai 224 

The Rejected Stone 233 

The Pilgrim's Last Reflections 248 

The Gospel of Art (1883) 263 

The Martyrdom of Man (1883) 271 

Consolers (1883) 289 

The Madonna of Montbazon (1883) .... 305 

Ellen Dana Conway (1897) 323 

International Peace and Arbitration (1900) . . 329 

Address on Sunday Opening of Exhibitions (1901) . 341 

Dogma and Science (1904) 353 

Public Service (1905) .369 

William Penn (1907) 393 

The Storm (Hymn) 435 

Bibliography 437 



INTRODUCTION 

MONCUKE D. CONWAY was born in Stafford 
County, Virginia, March 17, 1832, of an old settled 
Virginia family, owners of some land and some slaves, 
and at that time much bound up in Methodism. 

He died in Paris, November 15, 1907, being then al- 
most the only survior of the leading abolitionists in Amer- 
ica and of the Free JReligious movement in England. 

In the course of this pilgrimage (as he called it) Mr. 
Conway passed through many phases of thought, and 
lived in many places abroad and in America. There has 
seldom, if ever, lived a man who had such affectionate 
personal friendships, in so many parts of the world, among 
cultivated men and women of every religion and of every 
rank. 

In addition, he was well acquainted with most of the 
eminent men and women of his time. Many of these were 
his friends; others he met for literary or scientific pur- 
poses — for interviewing, if you like, — during the exciting 
and historic period in which he played a part. Some 
memorials of his literature will therefore not be without 
interest to the casual reader. 

To his friends and followers this was a great man, one 
who exercised great influence on their lives, and some 
volume has been desired to partially embody their mem- 
ories. It is judged that such a volume's most acceptable 
form will be to republish some of Mr. Conway's work, 
now out of print, and also some of his later discussions 
and addresses, never published for general circulation. 



viii INTRODUCTION 

Mr. Conway's life may be roughly divided into four 
periods. 

First. His apprenticeship, when he was writing for local 
newspapers in Virginia (especially the " Richmond Exam- 
iner ") and for the " Literary Messenger" ; at this time he 
was a Methodist circuit rider. 

A pamphlet of his printed in 1850, advocating free 
schools for the whites in Virginia, was his first separate 
publication. It is reprinted here. It created considerable 
stir, locally, and when it was ascertained that Mr. Conway, 
then a lad of eighteen, was the author, it got him into 
some trouble. 

Second. Mr. Conway's religious and slavery views hav- 
ing changed, he went North to Harvard Divinity School, 
and after graduating in 1853 became the Unitarian min- 
ister at Washington, D. C, and an anti-slavery speaker 
and worker. 

At this time the period of the martyrdom of the earliest 
abolitionists was about over. Though much social obloquy 
and personal disadvantage accompanied the public ex- 
pression of such views, the thinking men in the North 
were beginning at least to appreciate that there was a 
moral issue involved. 

In 1860 Lincoln was elected President, and it was from 
that time, perhaps, that the Republican party more and 
more absorbed those of anti-slavery belief. As the politics 
of the cause appeared and prospered, political success and, 
later, military fame, were to be found in that party. Little 
has been written of this intervening period, say from 1851 
to 1862, when many enthusiastic and brilliant men, serv- 
ing under the old leaders, spent their lives in arousing the 
conscience and the heart of the North against slavery, with- 
out hope of any reward, social, pecuniary, or political. 



INTRODUCTION ix 

Among these none worked with greater devotion, nor 
with greater effect, than Mr. Conway. 

We remember the pioneers and martyrs of the early 
period and the successful soldiers and statesmen of the 
later times, but have largely forgotten the abolitionists 
of this middle period. 

Of the very popular sermons and books published by 
Mr. Conway at this time, " The Golden Hour " is re- 
printed. It is a product of moral and religious enthusi- 
asm and fervor, that had its effect on its readers from 
President to soldiers in the ranks, and cannot be read 
without interest, whether as documentary evidence of the 
conditions of that period or as recalling early memories 
to old friends and personal characteristics to younger 
ones. 

Except in his crusade against slavery, Mr. Conway 
cared little about the political issues of the day ; perhaps 
even sympathized somewhat with the Southern people. 

The most appreciative and affectionate, yet keen and 
discerning, tribute to Mr. Conway, by Edward Emerson, 
refers to his outlander feeling in the North at that time : 

But this loyal man, in spite of hospitalities, had the 
feelings of an exile. The scorn felt by his new friends 
for those who were making him so — though he never 
posed as a martyr — could not but have a bitter taste. 
He loved his people, knew their goodness and the wretch- 
edness of their inheritance of slavery and its attendant 
ills, and, as for his family, knew that the separation was 
to them a sacred duty, — the very sacrifice of Isaac. . . . 
The old "Virginia Valour" was in Mr. Conway and 
ruled his life. He followed where it led, risking, without 
hesitation but with perfect frankness and good temper, 
the places of usefulness which he was happily filling, and 
often losing, though later his lost flocks often came to his 
position. 



X INTRODUCTION 

But lie wore his Southern valour " with a difference," 
for all war, public or private, was to him abhorrent, and 
this feeling he held to and bravely presented, even when 
the war-spirit was strongest. Yet his personal courage 
and utter disregard of exposure and of danger of violence 
in the looking up his father's scattered slaves and carryiug 
them, spite of indifference and malignity, through army 
lines and border cities to Ohio homes, is a gallant tale. 

Indeed, Virginia was the only territory that he really 
loved. He loved London and Paris and New York, be- 
cause of the life he found there or of his friends who 
lived there. But his affection for the rivers and fields 
of Virginia, the "sacred soil" and its fruits, alone pre- 
vented him from being a true cosmopolitan. 

Third. Mr. Conway was sent to England in 1862 by 
the Abolition Society to aid in arousing public sentiment 
there on the side of the North. In 1863 he became the 
pastor of South Place Chapel, Finsbury, in London, a 
Unitarian chapel somewhat out of the fold by reason of 
the advanced doctrines of W. J. Fox, M. P., its then 
just retired minister. Here Mr. Conway entered on the 
third stage of his career. 

At this time Lord John Eussell and Mr. Gladstone 
were in office, to be succeeded next year by Lord Derby 
and Mr. Disraeli. Carlyle and Tennyson were the liter- 
ary stars. Herbert Spencer had just issued the prospectus 
of his " Principles of Sociology." Darwin and Huxley had 
published purely scientific works. Matthew Arnold and 
Swinburne were new sensations in London drawing-rooms. 

It is to be doubted if, at that time, any of the men of 
science, poets, authors, or artists in England cared or 
thought about the opinions or beliefs of the great middle 
class of England ; much less of the low. 

On the other hand, the radicals of those days were a 



INTRODUCTION xi 

militant body, fighting established privilege both in Church 
and State ; although mostly dissenters, there were among 
them many unbelievers. 

Their disbeliefs were, however, largely political, and 
based on the controversial writings of Paine, Hume, Ben- 
tham, and others. There was almost enmity to all the 
arts and graces, the poetry and romance of life, as there 
had been among the early Puritans in their struggles. 

Professor Huxley in the prologue to the reprint of some 
of his later controversial writings, says : — 

Of polemical writing, as of other kinds of warfare, I 
think it may be said, that it is often useful, sometimes 
necessary, and always more or less an evil. ... It is an 
evil, in so far as controversy always tends to degenerate 
into quarrelling, to swerve from the great issue of what 
is right and what is wrong to the very small question of 
who is right and who is wrong. 

It was to men and women brought up in the radical 
and polemical schools, strong, fine characters, full of con- 
troversial zeal and ardor for reforms, that there entered 
the young Southerner ; a student, not only of the English 
literature of that age, but of much curious and to them 
unknown learning, both from the far East and the far 
West ; as full of enthusiasm for reforms as they, but with a 
hatred for polemics as for warfare. He assumed as a mat- 
ter of course that his audiences were anxious to be taught 
the romances and legends of the past, and to hear of the 
great truths underlying the teachings of their own estab- 
lished church, of the Roman Catholic Church, and of 
every other church. From the science, art, poetry, and the 
drama, of the past and of the day, he drew his lessons. 

He in no way concealed his radical, and, as the English 
term was, rationalist, religious views and his hatred of 



xii INTRODUCTION 

theological systems ; on the contrary, none was braver in 
taking his post by the side of any attacked as agnostics 
or atheists, or by any other name, for their religious or 
other opinions. 

But, on the other hand, he from the first recognized and 
felt the love of the human heart for old myths and super- 
stitions and their underlying meanings, — the need he 
felt for himself and others of appealing to the emotions as 
well as to the brain. 

He had the instinct of an artist for this work : ardent 
and enthusiastic in his study and belief in the new scien- 
tific and sociological discoveries, it was his province as 
a preacher and writer to transmute these into, not state- 
ments nor descriptions, but lessons and sermons appealing 
to the moral and religious senses of his public, just as he 
did with a great picture or a great drama; and he believed 
in bringing these direct to the people and not limiting 
them to the salon of the wealthy or the hall of the learned 
man of science, as had been the English habit. 

Matthew Arnold writes, somewhere, what almost seems 
to describe Mr Conway's work : — 

The great men of culture are those who have had a pas- 
sion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from 
one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the 
best ideas of their time ; who have laboured to divest know- 
ledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, 
professional, exclusive ; to humanize it, to make it efficient 
outside the clique of the cultivated and learned. 

In this work lay Mr. Conway's great ability, if not gen- 
ius. All that was needed by every one in the world, accord- 
ing to his view, was absolute liberty (within the bounds 
of justice to others) to enjoy the beautiful things of life. 

The value of liberty was being taught by Mill and others, 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

but the teaching how to enjoy the pleasures of knowledge 
and life in a scientific and religious way was something 
new to the average British citizen. 

In the course of twenty years note the change : Her- 
bert Spencer issuing popular editions; Huxley engaging 
in almost a propaganda of agnosticism in newspapers and 
magazines ; Darwin's later works so direct and forceful in 
their application to popular notions of theology as to arouse 
a tempest; Tyndall, Clifford, and many other scientific 
men engaged in popular expositions of their beliefs ; art 
galleries, settlements, and institutes for general culture 
springing up everywhere. What is referred to as the 
"New Reformation" was well on its way. 

Without claiming that this was due to Mr. Conway's 
work, it is to be said that much more of the credit is due 
to him for these results than he has yet received. His work 
was appreciated in England at the time ; his London con- 
gregation became very large and influential; the effects 
of his work were felt far and wide. In this country the 
letters and papers of the " American Minister in London " 
had a wide following of readers. There is reprinted of his 
writings during this period the vital part of his " Earth- 
ward Pilgrimage," a book that had a very large sale, and 
represented his attitude towards the problems of life at 
that time. Some of the chapters devoted to local and more 
transient subjects are omitted for want of space. 

Fourth. In 1897 Mrs. Ellen Dana Conway, his wife, 
died. The tribute Mr. Conway sent to their friends is in- 
cluded in this volume, though with some hesitation. It 
makes a record of the fact that it was largely owing to 
her influence and capacity and devotion that the enthusi- 
asm and imagination of her husband were rendered effect- 
ive and practical. 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

At the commencement of her fatal illness Mr. Conway 
retired from all active labors and returned to a permanent 
residence in New York, only varied by visits to England 
and the Continent, especially to Paris. During this period 
of dignified age he was constantly occupied with historical 
studies, always fascinating to him, especially when en- 
gaged in rendering historical justice to some public man 
unjustly treated. His lives of Thomas Paine and Edmund 
Randolph are models of vindicatory biography, and he 
was engaged in studies for a life of John Calvin at the 
time of his death. 

During this period he gave several addresses, and 
kept up an interest in public affairs. The judicious writer 
of a memorial in the " Springfield Republican " draws 
attention to the beauty of the literary style he had ac- 
quired. As representing this period we reprint two ad- 
dresses at Dickinson College on William Penn and on 
Public Service ; also an address at a Peace Conference 
at Paris, and an address on Dogma and Science given at 
Rome. 

A gentle philosopher who would be amazed to know of 
his own great fame with posterity writes : — 

Whoever will consider, with just measure and propor- 
tion, of what kind of man, and of what sort of action the 
glory maintains itself in the memory of books, will find 
that there are very few actions and very few persons of 
our times, who can there pretend any right. . . . The 
sages propose to themselves a nobler and more just end 
in so important an enterprise : " The reward of a thing 
well done is to have done it : the fruit of a good office is 
the office itself." 

Posterity commends thee : happy thou ! 
But will thy manes such a gift bestow 
As to make violets from thy ashes grow. 



INTRODUCTION xv 

In his last public speech, at a gathering of his old con- 
gregation and their children in London, in September, 
1907, Mr. Conway's closing words are — 

Let us give ourselves up to this fine ideal of our thought, 
and seek to spread happiness. To make beautiful homes 
and a beautiful life is more difficult than to paint a beau- 
tiful picture. To give happiness to a single heart now is 
better than all that can be done for unborn generations 
in unknowable ages beyond. 

In memory of one who certainly fulfilled his offices 
according to these tests, this collection is made from the 
enormous mass of his writings, in order, as before sug- 
gested, to combine some interest for the reader in famous 
men and doings of the last generation, with the preser- 
vation to his friends of some of his work in suitable 
form. 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

A PLEA OF EDUCATION, VIRTUE, AND THRIFT vs. IGNO- 
RANCE, VICE, AND POVERTY 

Let there be Light. — [The Bible] 
By MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY 



RECORDER PRINT 

FREDEKICKSBUKG, VIRGINIA 

October, 1850 



TO THE STATE CONVENTION OF 1850 
Gentlemen : Trustful that you will " hear me for my 

CAUSE," WHICH IS THAT OF OUR StATE AND OF HUMANITY, AC- 
CORDING TO MY EARNEST CONVICTION, I DEDICATE THESE PAGES 
TO YOU "WITH WHOM IS ALL OUR HOPE." 

THE WRITER. 
Warrenton, Va., October, 1850. 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

I. THE GENERAL PRINCIPLE DISCUSSED 

THE highest and most forceful Law is where duty and 
policy unite to confirm what has been taught by na- 
ture. In all the relations of life men recognize none more 
obligatory. This, then, will indicate our plan in the consid- 
eration of a subject which, we are profoundly convinced, 
is more intimately connected with our happiness and pros- 
perity as a community than any other. 

1. Education is the injunction of Nature, — We doubt 
if in the noon of the Nineteenth Century this will be 
anywhere questioned. Man is born in a state of normal 
ignorance and with a normal tendency to knowledge and 
repulsion to the first condition. The plant which is left in 
a dark room, save for a small orifice admitting a beam of 
light, has a propension only for that ; and if there be no 
gleam of light, will die. The bird that wings its way solely 
under the shades of night has an eye so constructed as to 
appropriate every possible ray that may be lurking in the 
absence of the source of light. The Phenomena with these 
lower orders of intelligences sufficiently indicate the cen- 
tral principle of mental structure. But these are not so 
much as a thousandth proportion of nature's analogies, 
which teach us that man's attribute is intellectual culture. 
Everything with nature has susceptibility for improve- 
ment, and this can only be effected by cultivation. The 
Peach, so useful and pleasant a fruit with us, was once a 
small almond, noted only for an exceedingly bitter kernel 



4 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

which contained some mild portion of poison. The Melon 
was formerly a long, pithy, and tasteless sort of gourd, 
running to waste in the regions of Capricorn ; it is now 
thought a healthy and delicious addition to our luxuries. 
Cultivation^ simply, has wrought these changes in these 
vegetables, as in many others, and is daily effecting what, 
if rightly noted and compared, would seem miracles. 

Man would never have been endowed with such capacity 
for improvement as we find in him, nor with such aspira- 
tions, had he not been created for such designs. The 
Greeks had the right idea of him, when they called him 
Anthropos. He alone lifts his eye and aspires to the full- 
est tension of his nature. Probably the sole distinction of 
his from the brute is that man has the means of gratify- 
ing this principle, which is inherent with all life. 

Nature acts by mediators. The parent must minister to 
the physical comfort of the child; and its moral and in- 
tellectual nurture is given in charge to no other. As with 
individuals, so the wave widens to communities. One gen- 
eration makes the path for another ; and the fashions, the 
laws, and the social contracts of the next century, are par- 
tially moulding in the mind of to-day. We are appointed, 
then, mediators to those who come after us. When Hec- 
tor was parting with Andromache, taking in his arms his 
infant boy Astyanax, he prayed to the Gods that all should 
cry out, "But this one is much greater than his father 
Hector ! " May we not offer that prayer and strive in so 
far as is given us to bring it about. 

Very few will deny this statement if it is made in re- 
spect of the physical cares of children ; and the principle 
that the mind is also as well committed to us as the bodily 
health is more acted on than admitted. We are ready to 
admit that it is ours to say what Railroads, what Canals 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 5 

our posterity shall have ; but when it is declared that we 
are now forming the condition of morals, enlightenment, 
and religious opinions which shall give tone to Virginia 
in A. D. 2000, why, many will shake their heads distrust- 
fully. Yet, let one of these Didymuses have his word 
called in question by his son of tender years, and ten to 
one he will punish him severely; and it will be on this 
very principle. 

This, then, is the relation which has been determined 
by Nature^ between the penultimate and last layers of the 
generations of men. 

2. This law of nature is a Duty, — With a greater 
proportion the fact that it is a Law of Nature would imply 
its being a moral obligation. But there are some who rea- 
son differently, although, it may be happily said, there are 
very few such in this age. They tell us that nature teaches 
us to live by means of the cruel destruction of life, and 
such like twaddle, which needs no notice here. But there 
are very many who will assail the position that it is a de- 
mand of nature, by questioning the happiness which it 
brings, or if it brings any. However incredible it may 
seem, there have arisen men, even in these last days, who 
have maintained that ignorance alone is bliss. Such have 
been the words of some who, by these sentiments, have 
proven themselves apostates to the highest gift of Heaven 
to earth. Such men as Wordsworth have joined with 
Jesuits, albeit from far different motives, in the advocacy 
of them ; and, we blush as Americans at the fact, our own 
brightest star, Emerson, has artfully taught the same 
inhuman, undignified, and contemptible heresy. It may 
be, seemingly, poetical enough to talk of savage health 
and simplicity, etc., but it is but half of the truth; and 
with them it is wilful suppression. To instance : let us 



6 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

read the subjoined extract from Ralph Waldo Emerson's 
wonderful Essays, which speaks succinctly the ideas of all 
who think with him. 

All men plume themselves on the improvement of so- 
ciety, and no man improves. Society never advances. It 
recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It 
undergoes continual changes ; it is barbarous, it is civil- 
ized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this 
is not amelioration. For everything that is given, some- 
thing is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old 
impulses. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, 
writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a 
bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zea- 
lander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an 
undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under. But com- 
pare the health of the two men, and you shall see that his 
aboriginal strength the white man has lost. If the travel- 
ler tells us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and 
in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you 
struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall 
send the white to his grave. The civilized man has built a 
coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on 
crutches, but loses so much support of muscle. He has got 
a fine Geneva watch, but he has lost the skill to tell the 
hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, 
and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the 
man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The 
solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as 
little, and the whole bright calendar of the year is without 
a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; 
his libraries overload his wit ; the insurance office increases 
the number of accidents; it may be a question whether 
machinery does not encumber ; — whether we have not lost 
by refinement some energy, by a Christianity (intrenched 
in establishment and forms) some vigor of wild virtue. 
For every stoic was a stoic; hut in Christendom where is 
the christian? 

Now all this is eloquent and even nobly expressed ; yet 
it is ignoble, for it is a suppressio veri. Take it, however, 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 7 

with all faith and with its own extent, and it proves merely 
that by gaining what is the noblest and the divinest, man 
loses that which pertains to the lower part of his structure, 
— health of body. And this last must be preferred to the 
former ! This is a narrow creed, and one which the phil- 
anthropist with his three-score years does not hold; we 
doubt if Emerson does. No, let us know the largest and 
most spiritual life, even though we live but a brief while ; 
there is some truth in the apothegm of the ancient writer, 
that " whom the gods love die young ! " It is a great anti- 
thetical truth where that life has been soon yielded by 
reason of their service. 

We gladly turn from such narrow sentiments as those 
we have cited above — for narrow we must call them, how- 
ever much we admire the writer of them — to those which 
follow. They are from a pen as vigorous as the spirit 
which prompts them is noble. 

Why was it that men learned the courses of the stars, 
and the revolution of the planets, before they found out 
how to make a good wagon-wheel ? Why did they construct 
the Roman aqueducts before they constructed a sawmill? 
Or why did they achieve the noblest models in poetry, in 
eloquence and in the drama, before they invented movable 
types? I think we can unriddle this enigma. The labor of 
the world has been performed by ignorant men ! 

To move a block of granite weighing 1080 pounds, 
along the rough floor of the quarry, requires a force equal 
to 748 pounds, or the strength of several men. To draw it 
over planks requires 652 pounds. Place the block on a 
platform of wood, and you can draw it with 606 pounds. 
Soap the two surfaces of the wood, and 182 pounds would 
suffice. Use rollers three inches in diameter and 34 pounds 
would draw it over a stone floor, and 28 over a wooden, 
whilst on a wooden platform only 22 pounds would be re- 
quired, which lastly would be reduced to three or four 
pounds with a railroad. And thus the amount of force 



8 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

necessary to accomplish the purpose is reduced about 200 
times, intelligence being necessary at each step to apply^ 
and much more to invent^ the next successive facility. 

If a savage will learn to swim, he can transport a dozen 
pounds on his back across a narrow body of water. If he 
will invent an axe, he can use a tree as a float and one of 
its limbs as a paddle, and can thus transport many times 
the former weight, many times the former distance. Hol- 
lowing out his log, he will increase its capacity still farther. 
Fastening several trees together, he makes a raft. Turn- 
ing up the ends of small poles, and grooving them together, 
or filling the interstices between so as to make them water- 
tight, he brings his rude craft, literally, somewhat into 
shipshape. Improving upon hull below and rigging above, 
he makes a proud ship to be wafted by the winds from con- 
tinent to continent. But even this does not content our ad- 
venturous naval architect. He frames iron arms for his ship ; 
and, for oars, affixes iron wheels capable of swift motion, 
and stronger than the strong sea. Into iron-walled cavities 
in her bosom he puts iron organs of massive structure 
and strength, and of cohesion insoluble by fire. Within 
these he kindles a small volcano ; and then, like a sentient 
and rational existence, this wonderful creation of his hands 
cleaves oceans, breasts tides, defies tempests, and bears its 
living freight triumphant round the globe. Now, take 
away intelligence from the shipbuilder, and the steamship 
— that miracle of human art — falls back into a floating 
log; — the log itself is lost; and the savage swimmer, 
bearing his dozen pounds on his back, alone remains. 

On the recognized principle, then, that we should feel 
ourselves morally concerned to prepare our children for 
the happiest and most useful sphere of action, to thor- 
oughly educate them is our Duty. 

3. It is a community'' s best Policy. — Society is a bundle 
of relations: whatsoever, whether remotely or otherwise, 
affects one atom of the system, disturbs the whole mass. I 
put my hand in this lamp beside me, and it is not only my 
hand that suffers; every nerve of the system is shocked. 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 9 

Why does society |)unish the criminal ? It is because the 
security of every other individual is concerned in the crime 
that has been committed. Society thus in reprobation, 
acknowledging the existence of these relations in its con- 
tract, must recognize them in whatever is promotive of its 
welfare. The grand proposition here comes up that has 
been so often reiterated by human lips from the inculca- 
tions of God : That it is the interest of every member of 
a Community that every other member thereof should be 
educated I 

Amongst the very many things wherewith history will 
delight to honor Massachusetts by the mention of, there 
will be none greater than the noble, beautiful regard of 
this in her Constitution. In Chapter Y, Sec. I, Art. I, 
of that instrument, this paragraph is found : " And whereas 
the encouragement of arts and sciences, and all good 
literature, tends to the honor of God, the advantage of 
the Christian religion, (j|^^) and the great benefit of this 
and the other United States of America^ it is declared^'' 
etc., etc. There is no public paper containing any sub- 
limer passage than that on earth. The farthest that any 
other of the State Constitutions go is to say that the dif- 
fusion of enlightenment amongst its citizens should be 
encouraged, etc., because of its benefit to their State ; very 
few go even this far ; but old Massachusetts comes forth 
and puts herself in the position of an individual of a 
society numbering thirty or more. And when it is recol- 
lected that the representatives of the people of Massachu- 
setts Bay adopted their Constitution, containing this 
sentiment, even so far back as 1780, who wonders that 
she has gained the title of the "Model State" over the 
world? 

First, then, in this connection we remark that it is the 



10 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

policy of a community because it makes more upright and 
responsible citizens. This hardly needs proof in this day, 
"Why have Churches all over the world taken education 
as handmaid to their religions ? Why have some nations 
united Church and State, thereby still retaining otherwise 
defective governments? Why do men day by day send 
their offspring to seminaries of learning? But one answer 
may be rendered to all these questions. Even in the Augus- 
tan age a heathen poet said, — 

Fideliter didicisse ingenuas artes 
EmoUifc mores, nee sinit esse feros.^ 

There was no occasion to test Horace's couplet then^ 
but men look on it as akin to prophecy now. It increases 
our security as a political Confederacy. It is public spirit 
which upholds law, and that alone can. But if that mind 
is not enlightened as to what the law is, its benefits, its 
authority; why, what sort of support can it give, but that 
which is most unreliable? The ignorant look only to the 
apparent oppressiveness of the law. They only think of 
the taxation system as it lightens their present purse; 
they neither see nor enjoy its effects. We have amongst 
us a race who are prohibited education by law — I mean 
the free negroes. Of course it is thought best ; but I would 
ask any one who knows anything about the statistics of 
crime in Virginia, if the largest proportion of it is not 
from them ? There is no more lawless set in the Common- 
wealth. 

Where there is defective education, there is room for 

1 Mr. Hazlitt makes an invidious remark on this tlioug-ht, that " the 
same maxim does not establish purity of morals that infers their mildness." 
Taking it, then, that they are equally pure in both states, which is more 
than we ought to allow, why is not a mild exertion of impure principle 
better than & ferocious ? 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 11 

the reception of principles the most hostile and pernicious. 
The fact has been more than once used to our prejudice, 
that the only diffusion of knowledge amongst us is through 
the medium of a somewhat exceptionable newspaper press.* 
Our governmental tendencies must be provincial so long 
as this is true. 

But in the second place, if something more substantial is 
required in confirming the opinion of its policy, we aver 
that it develops more than anything else the sources of 
production and wealth in a nation or state. Necessity is 
the mother of invention, and education creates more wants 
and larger influences. It raises the standard of expendi- 
ture, and this calls for a higher standard of supply. The 
wealthiest and most industrious communities are the best 
educated, and from these, if there be confidence in history 
and daily experience, spring the novel and marvellous 
discoveries that follow each other so swiftly in this age. 
All occupations are now closely united with information 
and experiment. Science and labour are Siamese twins. 
The subsequent extract is from the pen of one of the 
most patriotic and gifted sons of Virginia. 

^ The French Moderates have been chiefly eager to exaggerate this, in 
some degree, just condition of ours. With the assistance of this and other 
appliances, they have succeeded in suppressing, by a recent enactment, that 
which is most of all needed in that country now, the freedom of the Press. 
Early in this year M. Thiers, in commenting on the bill for Popidar Instruc- 
tion, gave xitterance to this, which had its effect : — 

" Look at the tendency of heads of families wanting their children to 
learn everything in a short time. Parents educated their children above 
their station, giving them Latin and Greek, and other things connected 
with the learned professions, all so slightly that they were for the most part 
mere sciolists, knowing a little of everything, and nothing well. This state 
of things was destructive to the grandeur of the country, and, if persisted 
in, would lead France at last to the situation of the American nation^ who 
gained their knowledge from the newspapers. It was evident that a social change 
ought to be effected in this respect." [Cries of Yes, yes, ou the right.] 



12 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

The persons employed in working the lead-mines of 
Wisconsin were accustomed for many years to throw 
away the richest and most profitable ores, because they 
were ignorant of the simplest elements of mineralogy. 
A year's judicious instruction to the working miners 
would have been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars 
to those concerned. 

But it must not be supposed that agricultural labourers 
are not benefited by a general diffusion of intelligence. 
They work with the powers of nature, to be sure. The 
sunshine and the shower are their co-labourers ; but how 
graciously does Nature lend herself to be moulded to all 
the forms of loveliness and utility by Art! How boun- 
teously does she lavish the kindly fruits of the earth, in 
return for the care which skilful intelligence bestows ! A 
hook- farmer is the subject of frequent, and sometimes 
not unmerited, ridicule; but it is because he is a mere 
book-farmer. When to his book-knowledge he adds equal 
experience and industry, he is almost uniformly superior 
to his brethren who are not possessed, by means of books, 
of other men's observations as well as their own ; and not 
seldom he develops truths which add important elements 
even to national wealth. How much does English agri- 
culture owe to the educated intelligence of Sinclair, and 
Young, and Coke! whilst that of America is not less in- 
debted to Skinner, and Buel, and Ruffin. To the latter's 
shrewd observations upon marl, and other calcareous 
manures. Eastern Virginia must attribute her prospective 
regeneration. And, in our own community, are not the 
most successful cultivators of the soil men whose native 
understandings are improved by more or less education ? 
Do you find amongst them any of those seven hundred 
adults unable to read and write, whom the census of 1840 
ascertained to be in the county? 

But Universal Education not only brings into requisi- 
tion and use new sources of wealth and enjoyment, but it 
renders them of far greater value after they have been 
discovered. This is getting to be more and more realized 
everywhere. 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 13 

We say realized^ because the truth of the statement is 
acknowledged by every one in every-day dealing. Who 
would not give more for an estate situate in a moral and 
enlightened and wealthy community than one notedly 
otherwise ? Who would not rather ask of a landed pro- 
perty, the purchase of which he had in contemplation, 
" What sort of society is about it ? '* than as to its pro- 
ductiveness and present condition as to cultivation. This 
he may amend, but that is an extrinsic affection of his 
property, both regarding its healthf ulness and value. 

The history of Massachusetts as told by the successive 
valuations of her property is a remarkable and convin- 
cing illustration of this. The increase of the price of land 
has been in almost exact ratio with the increase of the 
number and extent of schools! The latest report ex- 
hibits an increase of property valuation of almost one 
half since the year 1831 more than previously; and the 
increase from that date is from $207,000,000 to $300,- 
000,000! Even since the adoption of the Free School 
system in some of the municipalities of New Orleans in 
1846, the value of the situations in those districts have 
been enhanced nearly five per cent! And the returns 
from most of the counties which have adopted this policy 
confirm this experience. 

Our proposition is further true because it gives us 
health to obtain as well as to enjoy property or wealth. 
Ignorance cannot either prevent or cure disease. We have 
had sufficient proof of this in the ravages of the cholera. 
How can men who know not how to read either know the 
precautions or learn the approach of plague ? There are 
also innumerable hereditary diseases which information 
might check from further visitation. How much of phy- 
sical misery, then, might universal knowledge prevent, as 



14 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

well as crime ? The following is an extract from a circular 
we have just received from Hon. Horace Mann : — 

In regard to the first topic, it is well known that physi- 
cal qualities are hereditary. Disease and weakness descend 
from parent to offspring by a law of nature, as names 
descend by a law custom. God still ordains that the 
bodily iniquities of the fathers shall be visited upon the 
children unto the third and fourth generation. When we 
look backward and see how the number of our ancestors 
is doubled at each remove in the ascendjng scale, it af- 
frights us to reflect how many confluent streams from 
vicious fountains may have been poured into the physical 
system of a single individual. Where, for many genera- 
tions, this horrid entailment of maladies has not been 
broken by a single obedient and virtuous life, who can 
conceive of the animal debasements and depravities that 
may centre in a single person. At every descent, the 
worst may become more worse, and the possible series of 
determination is infinite. Before the human race, or any 
part of it, becomes more diseased, or physically more vile, 
is it not time to arrest and restore ? This can only be 
done through education, or through miracles; and it 
would require more than three hundred and sixty-five 
miracles each year to preserve health and strength under 
our present vicious social habits. Those who do not expect 
the intervention of miracles are false to their families, 
to the community, and to God, if they do not urge for- 
ward the work of Physical Education as the only means 
of rescuing the race from an infinity of sicknesses, weak- 
nesses, and pains. Public Schools are the only instru- 
mentality for inculcating upon the community at large a 
knowledge of the great laws of Health and Life. 

Mr. Leroi Edwards, President of the Board of School 
Commissioners of Norfolk (which adopted this policy 
under Act of Assembly, February 25, 1850), speaks thus 
in a private letter to a friend in Albemarle : — 

Our experience proves what you say to be true, — that 
a public free school system is cheaper than the old sys- 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 15 

tern in the aggregate, and consequently to the majority; 
that it educates, at a less aggregate cost, many more chil- 
dren; that the schools are or may be made better; that, 
by diffusing education more universally, it diffuses good 
morals and regularity of life, and so makes society more 
peaceful and happy ; that it enlarges the intellectual cap- 
ital of a community, and so augments its productive powers, 
and consequently its wealth ; and, lastly, that by mak- 
ing men more happy, virtuous, and intelligent, it rescues 
property from possible encroachment and difficulty^ and 
sensibly enhances its market value. 

The improved state of our society, and the increased 
value of our lands^ since the establishment of our free 
schools, exceed greatly what the most sanguine advocates 
of the system anticipated. And if the system were now 
to be suddenly abandoned (of which there is not the slight- 
est danger), an amount of good has been already accom- 
plished which will tell and be felt through many genera- 
tions, and perhaps through all time and eternity, — good, 
too, which could not have been otherwise effected; and 
what makes it still more delightful to contemplate, not 
one single evil^ arising from the same source can he 
pointed to as an offset. 

I wish that I might persuade my fellow citizens of the 
mountains to adopt a similar system. I would refer the 
people of Albemarle, particularly, to the opinions of their 
own Jefferson, who believed that the continuance of our 
Republican form of Government was absolutely dependent 
on public education. 

II. THE PRINCIPLE TO BE APPLIED. — HOW? 

If, then, intellectual culture is the best minister and phy- 
sician, the question arises, how may a State best diffuse 
intelligence ? Every thinking man admits that public au- 
thority must render some sort of aid to Education. People, 
as a general proposition, must be instructed in order to 
attain high or worthy achievement in life. How often, to 
the burning disgrace of humanity, do those who would have 



16 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 



been shining lights under other auspices go down to the 
grave "unwept, unhonoured, and unsung?" — How few 
are the souls that can overtop these social barriers which 
hem in those who are born in their pale, as the Indians tie 
their offspring to boards ? Our Rittenhouses and Frank- 
lins are few indeed ; their growth and luxuriance are 
abnormal ; they are like those trees of the East which have 
something intrinsic with the germ which causes them to 
rise up and flourish in beauty despite the barren sands. 

There can be but four forms of the relation of Govern- 
ment to Education. We have arranged them as follows, 
with examples of the countries wherein each form exists, 
with their respective results : — 



Nation or State. 



(1) United King- 
dom of Great Brit- 
ain and Ireland. 



(2) Virginia. 

(3) New York. 2 

(4) Massachusetts. 



Method of Education. 



No interference of Govern- 
ment institutions estab- 
lished by Churches, benev- 
olent Societies, etc., about 
£500,000 expended in Char- 
ity Schools. 

Provisions solely for the 
indigent.^ 



Some appropriation for all, 
and a partial expense for all. 

Indiscriminate instruction 
of all classes by support of 
taxation, or Free School 
system. 



Results of the System. 



1,500,000 children of 
school age completely 
ignorant in England. To 
every 10 in the Isles 
taught, there are 3 who 
are not. 

1 adult in 13 unable to 
read or write — 50,000 
adults and children of 
school age in ignorance. 

1 Adult to every 53 that 
cannot read nor write. 

Only 1 adult ignorant, 
to every 189.^ 



Now from a right and thoughtful notice of this table, 
which we have made from the best and most accurate 
sources, to what conclusion can every intelligent mind 

^ This exclusive of nine tenths of our labourers — the blacks. 
2 About to change. 

2 This the possible working of the system ; in reality an adult cannot be 
found there sane and unable to read and write. 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 17 

come, but that the most infinitely superior mode of Edu- 
cation is the Free School System! — And if there be* any 
faith in the indications of human experience this is true. 
It is not only the most superior in that it is the cheapest 
and justest, but it is the only plan of thorough universal 
instruction that has been devised. What way experience 
of states confirms our position we wiU try and present 
as concisely as we can, from a brief notice of the above 
four systems in connection with countries which represent 
them. 

Reflection will make manifest that the first and third 
of these systems are germane, comparatixjely^ and also the 
second and fourth ; we will, therefore, to be succinct in our 
review, consider these under their two natural divisions. 
"We will introduce what we have to say first, with the en- 
suing extract from Art. 5 of the " Westminster Review " 
(No. CV, July, 1850), which is before us.^ 

There is a growing feeling among thoughtful men that 
some alteration is needed in our system of education. A 
rumbling sound of dissatisfaction at what is going on 
under the name of education in all our establishments, from 
the Universities down to the Village Schools, has been 
long making itself heard. At the present moment the call 
for more education is almost universal, but here and there, 
besides it, is to be met with an observing, cautious inquirer 
who wishes to learn something more about this education, 
the increase of which is so urgently called for ; who asks, 
what is it or what has it been hitherto ? What has it done 
for us thus far ? What may be expected from it in future, 
if only increased in quantity, without being altered in 
quality ? 

Under-currents such as these have been for some time 
forcing their way among European communities. They 
are now coming to the surface, and are beginning to dis- 
turb the upper stream of thoughts and convictions, and 
1 From a Review of Works of MM. Low and Baptist. 



18 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

threatening the stability of long-established systems, and 
of institutions deemed perfect. 

There is enough in all this to fix attention, and to 
arouse an anxious spirit of inquiry as to what can have 
brought about such a state of things. One of the most hope- 
ful signs of our times is the increasing readiness to search 
for causes, — for the causes of evil to be averted, of good 
to be secured. Moving in this direction, who can escape 
being forced upon the consideration of what education has 
done, is doing, and is likely to do ? 

Now 0U7' question is also for causes, and we ask the 
cause of this perturbation ? Why should England, whose 
outlay for education is as large as that of any other Six- 
teen Millions sublunary, be convulsed by these trembling 
heavings that predict the event of an earthquake not afar 
off. Why this discontent with the glorious University 
system made venerable by the persistence of two hundred 
years, and which, when established, was thought the ideal 
keystone of the educational arch that spanned Christen- 
dom ? Why? Let us search for causes ! 

The Constitution of England is silent on popular Edu- 
cation and noisy on Religion. It is known that the greater 
portion of crime is perpetrated by youth ; and that the two 
thirds of hardened criminals commence at the precocious 
age of fifteen. 

Now, in such an assemblage of phlegmatic people as the 
English, this is eminently the case. In the year 1846 it 
was ascertained that one fourth of the criminals in Lon- 
don was of the youth between fifteen and seventeen, and 
that that class was one tenth of the population. The fol- 
lowing has been compiled showing the proportion of crimes 
to the various ages, taking the whole of the threescore 
years of active life as unity. The table is warranted by 
Redgrave's Report on Crime for 1846 ; and some reports 
of the London City Mission. 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 



19 



Under 15 


15 to 20 


20 to 25 


25 to 30 


30 to 35 


35 to 40 


40 to 50 


50t6 60 


0.1805 


2.4747 


2.4002 


1.8250 


1.2248 


0.8750 


0.5312 


0.2500 



A late Edinburgh writer says : " The roots of criminality 
shoot, however, deep into childhood. They live in the pre- 
ceding period, from ten to fifteen, the school-life of a child. 
If, then, the influence which men have been accustomed to 
ascribe to education be not a dream, it offers a key to the 
whole position of crime." 

How, then, in the name of Heaven, can such a state of 
things coexist in any country with good order and fealty. 
And this is the worse as the people are getting to think 
it, as it is, the legitimate deduction of their laws to have 
their cities filled with pickpockets and assassins. Hence 
the large and agitated meetings on the education question 
held of late at Manchester, Leeds, Derby, York, and other 
places ; and the result of these movements is the excited 
debate, in the last House of Commons, on Mr. Fox's Bill 
for Instruction. For our part, however, we may suggest, 
although it seems irrelevant, that in our judgment Eng- 
land can no more institute common education and keep 
her present Constitution, than she can denude herself of 
the moral scrofula she has without the same. But it is 
cried, " Where on earth is there such an educated class 
as that of England ! " Well, it bears the same relation to 
the un-ed\iG2ited class as the false-fire to the marsh, which 
is bright in proportion to the putrescence of the latter. 
Just to think ! that the 8,000,000 souls of Ireland are as 
the barbarians beneath the car of the Juggernaut, which 
is glorified as those destroyed are more numerous ! ^ 

The aristocracy, finding no provisions for their education 
^ Good Juggernaut, forgive me I 



20 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 



by the Government, made up their Colleges and Acad- 
emies ; the Church found that it might as well be in the 
coral beds of the North Sea as without education, and so 
it numbered its Seminaries along with its Doric Palisades. 
The English workmen then receded into a degraded^ igno- 
rant^ and therefore vicious class. A total revolution is 
requisite for any effectual measures to educate them. 

Yet, how vainly is the English Government spending 
millions of pounds for education! Since 1839 (according 
to the Minutes of '48-'49-'50) 3782 schoolhouses have 
been built at an expense (they only) of £470,854. We 
close our remarks on England with the following enumera- 
tion, showing the enormous (and yet futile) and partial 
expenditure on education. 



Denomination of 


ii 


111 

§11 


Number of Apprentices. 


Amount con- 
ditionally 
awarded for 


Schools. 








Tear ending 




^m 


SIOH 


Boys. 


Girls. 


Total. 


31 Oct. 1850. 


National or Church of 












£ s. d. 


England Schools . 


973 


482 


1,638 


910 


2,593 


49,472 10 


British, Wesleyan, and 














other Protestant 














Schools, not connect- 














ed with the Church 














of England .... 


181 


69 


434 


459 


593 


10,356 10 


Roman Catholic 














Schools 


32 


10 


46 


33 


79 


1,323 10 


Schools in Scotland, 














connected with the Es- 














lished Church . . . 


82 


39 


161 


28 


189 


3,492 


Schools in Scotland not 














connected with the 














Established Church. 


93 


81 


100 


27 


127 


3,467 


Total .... 


1,361 


681 


2,424 


1,157 


3,581 


68,11110 01 



1 It is within the recollection of many living how the small State of 
Servia, in Europe, was noted for the retention of its heathenism. More 
witches were burned and vampires laid there than in any other. By some 
strange fortuity a school system germane to the district form has fallen 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 21 

Now the provisions of that system of which New York 
is type must had to the same results. The provisions 
which are made are nearly as much disregarded by the 
poor as the rich. But we need not speak of this method, 
for between the German strikes and some strong philan- 
thropists they are about to adopt the Free School system, 
in the rightful meaning of that term.^ A large portion of 
the State has even now done so ; the rest will follow soon. 
And when New York has Free Schools, we may look for 
a State such as the world has never seen before ; at any 
rate, their system is far better than ours, which in connec- 
tion with the best we now proceed to notice. 

A contrast between Virginia and Massachusetts is pain- 
ful ; it would be crushing were we not hopeful of better 
things. 

The Pilgrim Fathers landed in Massachusetts Bay, in 
1620. They were men of energy and of forethought, what- 
ever just censure may be heaped upon them for their re- 
ligious intolerance. They had not builded houses and 
planted farms, and, in short, established the rudiments of 
economy, before they became convinced that the perpe- 
tuity of all they might effect depended on the instruction 
of their children. That was not a puritan move, however 
much they may have thought it one. Education does away 
with intolerance, superstition, and fanaticism. 

Fifteen years after they had set foot on Plymouth Rock, 
they took action on education. Here is the entry : — 

" 13th day of April, 1635 : Likewise it was then generally 
agreed upon, that our brother Philemon Purmont shall be 

there ; and the result is that its influence has not only renervated Servia, 
but has widened to the neighbouring States. Wallachia, where in 1620, the 
great witch-massacre took place, will soon follow her torch. 

^ By an act of the last Legislature of New York, the question of Free 
Schools is submitted to the popular ballot this year. 



22 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

intreated to become schole-master for the teaching and 
nourtering ^ of children with us." Brother Purmont was 
remunerated by thirty acres of good land on "Muddy 
River," which, it seems, was about the readiest currency 
to pay non-productive labourers ; for we read in the same 
Record-book that there was given " a garden plot to Mr. 
Daniel Maude schoolmaster, upon the condition of build- 
ing thereon, if neede be." 

The next step was in 1642 ; the General Court at that 
time enacting instructions to the municipal authorities 
that they should "have a vigilant eye over their brethren 
and neighbours — to see first that none of them shall suffer 
so much barbarism (!) in any of their families, as not to 
endeavour to teach, by themselves or others, their children 
and apprentices, so much learning as may enable them per- 
fectly to read the English tongue, and (obtain a) knowledge 
of the capital laws, upon penalty of thirty shillings, for 
each neglect therein." 

It may be remarked that Massachusetts went about its 
system of education in a strangely different style from that 
which has been pursued by other communities. They made 
it binding on all to educate those of whom they had charge, 
before they made it free to all! 

The same statute provided "that all parents and mas- 
ters do breed and bring up their children and apprentices 

1 " If, as is supposed, this word, now obsolete in this connection, implied 
the disposition and power, on the part of the teacher, as far as such an ob- 
ject can be accomplished by human instrumentality, to warm into birth, to 
foster into strength, and to advance into precedence and predominance, all 
elevated thoughts respecting the duties and the destiny of life, and a su- 
preme reverence for the character and attributes of the Creator, then how 
many teachers have since been employed, who have not nourished the chil- 
dren committed to their care!" — Eleventh Report of First Secretary of 
Massachusetts Board, 1849. 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 23 

in some honest, lawful calling, labour, or employment either 
in husbandry or some other trade, profitable for them- 
selves and the Commonwealth." 

Who can wonder at the success of Massachusetts, start- 
ing forth with such a statute as this, wherein were "recog- 
nized and embodied," in the words of Mr. Mann, "the 
highest principles of Political Economy and of social well- 
being, — the universal education of children and the pre- 
vention of drones or non-producers among men!" 

In the year of our Lord 1647, twenty-one thousand souls 
who had rested from religious persecution about thirty 
years adopted the present model Free School system of 
their State! History will love to enroll this bold stride 
along with the story of the Reformation and of the Ameri- 
can Revolution. 

But alas ! what was the course of those who landed at 
Jamestown thirteen years before. Darkness lived long 
with them ; and, in truth, their children have scarcely seen 
any dawn. 

How they could best eradicate the Indians, instead of 
seeking to improve and civilize them; how they could mul- 
tiply their stock and their barns; how they might adroitly 
obtain the largest grants of land of the King or the Gov- 
ernor, — these occupied their thoughts.* They gloried in 

1 In 1642 Jacob Stover, a loyal son of TeU, applied to the Governor of 
Virginia for a grant of a large and fertile tract of land on the Sherandah 
(Shenandoah), several miles above Winchester ; but his claim was overruled, 
because there were not enough in his family for the requisitions of the law. 
Stover, nowise abashed, went over to England and submitted his petition to 
the King. On being questioned as to the number of settlers, he encited a 
sufficient list with the help of his Live-Stock, to each of which he had given 
a human name for the occasion ! His Majesty Charles I, ignorant that the 
Williams, Georges, and Susans, seeking royal consideration, were some 
squeaking in pig-pens and others braying in the luxuriant meadows of the 
Valley, was " done for " and issued the grant I 



M FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

the absence of education ; each said in heart with the Lord 
Douglas in Marmion : — 

Thanks to St. Bothan, son of mine 
Could never pen a written line! 

What was thought of Education may be best understood 
from the subjoined question and answer, taken from an 
antique paper of Inquiries to the Governor of Virginia, 
submitted by the Lords Commissioners of Foreign Plan- 
tations, with the Governor's answers to each distinct head. 
They will be found in full in Henning's "Statutes at 
Large," vol. ii, p. 611, with this note prefixed : — 

These inquiries were propounded in the year 1670, and 
received their answers in 1671, while Sir William Berkeley 
was Governor of Virginia. A more correct statistical ac- 
count of Virginia at that period cannot, perhaps, anywhere 
be found. The answers appear to have been given with 
great candour, and were from a man well versed in every- 
thing relating to the country, having been for many years 
Governor. 

[After questions and answers about the "Courts of 
judicature" — "castles and fforts" — "boundaries and con- 
tents of the land" — "planters, servants, and slaves" — 
"duties" and "revenues to his My." — the Question 23d 
runs thus :] 

" What course is taken about the instructing the people 
within your government in the Christian religion; and 
what provision is there made for the paying of your 
ministry?" 

''Answer. — The same course that is taken in England 
out of towns ; every man according to his ability instructing 
his children. We have fforty-eight parishes, and our minis- 
ters are well paid and by my consent should be better if 
they would pray oftener and preach less. But of all other 
commodities, so of this, the worst are sent us, and we had 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 25 

few that we could boast of, since the persecution in Cxom- 
welVs tyranny drove divers worthy men hither. But, I 
thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I 
hope we shall not have these hundred years ; for learning 
has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the 
world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against 
the best government. God keep us from both!" 

Mr. Henning has the following note on this paper which 
is interesting : — 

Nothing can display in stronger colours the execrable 
policy of the British Government, in relation to the colo- 
nies, than the sentiments uttered by Sir William Berkeley, 
in his answer to the last interrogatory. These were doubt- 
less his genuine sentiments, which recommended him so 
highly to the favour of the crown that he was continued 
governor of Virginia from 1641 to 1677, a period of thirty- 
six years, if we except the short interval of the Common- 
wealth, and a few occasional times of absence from his 
government, on visits to England. The more profoundly 
ignorant the colonists could be kept the better subjects 
they were for slavery. None but tyrants dread the diffu- 
sion of knowledge and the liberty of the Press. 

The same hostility to the introduction of printing 
which was manifested by Sir William Berkeley was shown 
by Lord Culpeper, who was Governor of Virginia in 1682, 
only eleven years after these principles were avowed by 
Sir William Berkeley. It will be seen by the following 
extract, which is from a MS. of unquestionable authority, 
that at the last-mentioned date a printer had actually 
commenced his business in Virginia, but was prohibited 
by the Governor and Council from printing anything, 
till the King's pleasure should be known, which, it may be 
presumed, was very tardily communicated, as the first evi- 
dence of printing thereafter in Virginia was on the revised 
laws contained in the edition of 1733. 



26 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

February 21, 1682, Jolin Buckner called before the 
Lord Culpeper and his council for printing the laws of 
1680 without his excellency's likeness, and he the printer 
ordered to enter into bond in £100 not to print anything 
thereafter, until his majesty's pleasure should be known. 
— [Bland MS. p. 498.] 

How different this given us by Mr. Henning from the 
following memorandum in Governor Winthrop's Journal 
in Massachusetts, under date of 1645, about forty years 
previous : — 

Divers free schools were erected, as at Roxbury (for 
maintenance, whereof every inhabitant bound some house 
or land for a yearly allowance forever) and at Boston, 
where they made an order to allow £50 to the master and 
an house, and ,£30 to an usher, who should also teach to 
read and write and cypher, and Indian^ children were to 
he taught freely, and the charge to be made by yearly 
contribution, either by voluntary allowance or by rate of 
such as refused, &c., and this order was confirmed by the 
General Court. Other towns did the like, providing main- 
tenance by several means. — Savage's Edition, History of 
New England^ vol. ii, p. 215. 

Now these are humiliating comparisons ; and when we 
look at the comparative progress of the two States in im- 
portance, since those old days where we had the superior 
chance, what else can we ascribe to it but this? The con- 
clusion is that the Free School system is the very best 
promotion for the State's prosperity. 

I know it is urged at the North that the reason of our 
being as Joshua's sun amongst the motions of other plan- 
ets is because of Slavery. But what can we give in answer 
to this, save that denial which a practice of this system 
will give. We are aware, too, that it is urged by them that 
we can not have Free Schools in this State, because of that 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 27 

Institution. The following is from the New York " Trib- 
une " of September 7, 1850 : — 

Free Schools — Slavery. — A Virginia friend, writing 
to controvert a remark in our letter of last June from Vir- 
ginia, that Slavery was the cause of her declining power 
and thrift, insists that the true cause of her retrograde 
career is as follows : — 

" Let me whisper that something — no, proclaim it ! It 
is Universal Education. Free Schools — mental cultivation 
of all the men, women, especially the children, more than 
the cultivation of Gold and Iron mines or Tobacco fields 
— this is what we want. Oh, how badly do we want them ! 
It is more than a want — it is a sine qua non for the 
Commonwealth of Virginia." 

" Here is a distinction without a difference. Free Schools, 
or Common Schools of any kind, cannot flourish with Slav- 
ery. You may have them in cities and large villages, but 
not throughout a State like Virginia. The farms are too 
large, the wastes too extensive, the (white) children too 
widely scattered. Besides, the Poor lack the consideration 
and the spirit, the ambition and the energy, which is re- 
quisite to a general maintenance of, and attendance upon, 
Common Schools. Never will Virginia's White children be 
generally schooled until her Black ones shall cease to be 
sold. Our friend may be sure of this. 

Men of Virginia ! are you dumb to such words as these ? 
Yes. But this is not the truth in the matter ; we can have 
Common Schools, and that, too, coexistent with Slavery. 
Read the reports from our counties which have adopted 
Free Schools and successfully, Mr. Greeley ! To save you 
and others trouble, we will cite some materials of fact here. 
The following is an abstract of the School Commissioners' 
Reports, condensing the operations of the system in those 
counties which have adopted them during the year end- 
ing 30th September, 1848. Let any one carefully consider 
this and the excerpts from the several Reports which we 
shall give presently, and then say why Free Schools can- 
not subsist in Virginia ! 



28 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 



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FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 29 

How cheering amongst the doleful records from other 
counties, to meet such hopeful items as these. 
From the Report from Henry County : — 

The salutary effects of the system are beginning to man- 
ifest themselves in a manner that promises great good at 
no distant day. Already has the dissemination of know- 
ledge been so great and diffusive, that the board believes it 
hazards nothing in saying that it would be difficult to find 
a youth in the county, of ten years of age, who cannot read 
and write, unless he be an idiot, or from physical deform- 
ity or imbecility has been unable to attend school. Out of 
a white population of only 4243 souls, 1480, or full one 
third, have been instructed during the year. 

The following is from the Report of Jefferson County : 

At the organization of the system, strong opposition was 
manifested by some of the citizens of the county. It was 
denounced as an innovation, as onerous to the tax-payer, 
as favouring one class of the community at the expense of 
another, as cumbrous and inoperative in the community 
for which it was designed. In various forms this dissatis- 
faction manifested itself. The board are, however, pleased 
to be able to state that, instead of a disposition to oppose 
being indulged, there is every reason to believe that there 
is a willingness to give the system a fair trial. Men for- 
merly opposed to the system have consented to be elected 
commissioners, and now actively cooperate with its first 
friends in carrying it on. Others, its former opponents, aid 
in other ways the commissioners and the first friends of 
the system in the performance of their labours in establish- 
ing the system. 

Such have been the proceedings of the board. 

This statement is submitted to the president and di- 
rectors of the Literary Fund, with the assurance of the 
board that the system has been advantageous ; and though 
the expenditure of money has been considerable, the bene- 
ficial results following the establishment and prosperous 
conduct of the system will fully compensate for such ex- 



30 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

penditure by the blessings attendant upon an educated 
community. 

Kanawha. — We will merely add that the system thus 
far has met the expectations of its friends and advocates. 
To put the system fully in operation in a county so exten- 
sive and so sparsely populated as this must be a work of 
time ; and it affords us much pleasure to state that almost 
all the districts now have good houses and schools a good 
portion of the year in operation, and a considerable number 
of schools where none ever before existed. A spirit of edu- 
cation is gradually spreading among the people, and the 
benefits of the system are beginning to be understood and 
properly appreciated. 

Northampton. — The school commissioners report that, 
since the first arrangement of their districts, it has been 
found necessary to rearrange them so as to make thirteen 
instead of eleven, and there are now in operation thirteen 
schools in the county, which, it is believed, will cost $4200 
per annum. The branches of education taught in these 
schools are such as are usual in the best English school, 
and but little difficulty has been found in securing the 
services of competent and exemplary teachers for most of 
the schools. Under the present system we find many a 
youth at school, and deriving incalculable advantage 
thereat, who under the old system would, in all probability, 
scarcely ever have seen a schoolhouse. Reports have been 
received from several of the teachers, as well as from the 
trustees, setting forth the great improvements which have 
been made with the scholars, even in the short time em- 
braced in this report. Although taxation is high, there are 
comparatively few complaints with the people, believing no 
doubt, as do the commissioners, that if the present system 
of district public schools be diligently and efficiently carried 
out, the benefit to be derived therefrom by their children, 
and for ages yet to come, will be almost beyond conception. 

The official report for 1847, from the county of iVbr- 
folk^ says : — 

One of the best recommendations of our system with 
the people is that it is supported by a tax levied on both 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 31 

person and property, in the proportion of about one third 
to the former, to two thirds to the latter. . . . The 
schools are, therefore, received as public property, in which 
every person has an interest. They are not regarded as 
charity schools, nor as places set apart for the instruction 
of the indigent, discriminating between wealth and poverty, 
and extinguishing forever, in the infant bosom, the first 
spark of honest pride. . . . The operation of the system, 
thus far has equalled the expectations of its most sanguine 
friends. . . . When we recur to the fact that, prior to 
the establishment of this system, there were less than 200 
children in regular attendance, from the same neighbour- 
hood and county which now send over 1200, the conclusion 
is irresistible that the plan works well. It would be diffi- 
cult to estimate its value. In whatever aspect it is viewed, 
its benefits are incalculable. Among the children, it has 
excited a laudable spirit of emulation, and will, doubtless, 
pave the way, and open the portals of learning and science 
to many a genius who had else been doomed to obscurity. 
Among parents, it excites a lively interest in the destiny 
of their children. Its moral effects are visible to the ordi- 
nary observer. 

Portsmouth, November 28, 1848. 

SiK, — The accompanying tabular statement of the con- 
dition, etc., of the public schools of Portsmouth, from Oct. 
1st, 1847, to Oct. 1st, 1848, will make a sufficient exhibit, 
without any detailed statements here. As that statement, 
properly understood, will exhibit, so I take occasion to 
say here, the system is decidedly successful. Our highest 
expectations have been more than realized. We trust the 
schools are now firmly established, and will continue to 
meet the wants of the community. 

I am yours respectfully, 

To J. Brown, Jr., Esq., \ T. HuME, 

2d Auditor, etc, f Chairman Board Sch, Comm'rs, 

Some of the counties have been so long reaping the 
golden fruits of the system that it has become a part of 
their personality; in the reports from them we find no 



32 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

enthusiastic rejoicings, but simply ihQ facts, showing the 
regular and perfect workings of the machine there. Such 
counties are Washington and Southampton, which have 
adopted the district system since 1829. 

Now, along with these cheering readings I would like 
to cite some of the reports of other counties — nevertheless, 
for the pain they must inflict on every lover of his State. 
Who can read their dismal accounts in the Second Audit- 
or's annual statement, or their significant " No remarks," 
without at once feeling that this system is the one thing 
needful with us ? And that its absence is the only thing 
that is weighing us down beneath the level of other States ? 
Like men with nightmare we are striving to rise or go on, 
or avoid some indefinite evil ; if some hand do not awake 
us, we die. 

III. OBJECTIONS TO THE SUPERIORITY OF THE DISTRICT 
SYSTEM 

But just here I hear the hideous screamings of a hun- 
dred olden hoot-owls (it is to be hoped, no more), which 
gloat on Night, Night, dark Night. They love not the light, 
especially, if it brings to view the promotive of their objec- 
tions. 

These are of two kinds. Sumptuary and Moral ; for al- 
though the objections sneak about us under a Protean state 
of being, yet we will not be far wrong in regarding these 
as the grand types, at least, of them all. 

Objector No. 1 comes forth with his purse hermetically 
sealed : — 

What ! will you dare rob me of my property for this 
doubtful enterprise ? Will you double my taxes and make 
me pay for John Snooks' snub-noses to go and fight away 
their time at school ? I have no children, and yet I 'm to 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 33 

pay just the same as if I liad; and if I had any, do you 
think I'd send them to that miserable hive, where all the 
lowest grog-swigs send theirs! It's shameful to think of 
such robbery ; no Cromwell could attempt such an usurpa- 
tion! 

Come, now, my pinched proprietor ! let us reason to- 
gether, if you know what that means. When did you get 
that estate of yours ? — how ? — whence ? — and how long 
do you expect to hold it in fee simple ? That which you 
call your own is noty for you cannot hold it more than 
somewhere about three-score and ten years, at farthest. It 
did not belong to your father, else how is it yours ; nor 
will it be otherwise with you and your children. Think 
you that the riches of your farm were created by God for 
any individual or individual generation ! No. Men are at 
best but overseers, " clothed with a little brief authority." 

This great principle of natural law may be illustrated 
by a reference to some of the unstable elements, in regard 
to which each individual's right of property is strongly 
qualified in relation to his contemporaries, even while he 
has acknowledged the right of possession. Take the 
streams of water, or the wind, for an example. A stream, 
as it descends from its sources to its mouth, is successively 
the property of all those through whose land it passes. 
My neighbour, who lives above me, owned it yesterday, 
while it was passing through his lands ; I own it to-day, 
while it is descending through mine ; and the contiguous 
proprietor below will own it to-morrow, while it is flowing 
through his, as it passes onward to the next. But the 
rights of these successive owners are not absolute and un- 
qualified. They are limited by the rights of those who are 
entitled to the subsequent possession and use. While a 
stream is passing through my lands I may not corrupt it, 



34 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

so that it shall be offensive or valueless to the adjoining 
proprietor below. I may not stop it in its downward course, 
nor divert it into another direction, so that it shall leave 
his channel dry. I may lawfully use it for various pur- 
poses, — for agriculture, as in irrigating lands or water- 
ing cattle ; for manufactures, as in turning wheels, etc. ; 
but in all my uses of it I must pay regard to the rights 
of my neighbours lower down. So no two proprietors, nor 
any half-dozen proprietors, by conspiring together, can 
deprive an owner, who lives below them all, of the ulti- 
mate right which he has to the use of the stream in its 
descending course. We see here, therefore, that a man has 
certain qualified rights — rights of which he cannot law- 
fully be divested without his own consent — in a stream 
of water, before it reaches the limits of his own estate ; at 
which latter point he may, somewhat more emphatically, 
call it his own. And in this sense a man who lives at the 
outlet of a river, on the margin of the ocean, has certain 
incipient rights in those fountain-sources that well up 
from the earth at the distance of thousands of miles.' 

The question then is, how to improve and use that pos- 
session whereof man is temporary tenant, at most, for 
the best interest of those who come after him. But you 
have "no children! " Yet there will be some one who will 
be your assign, whether you will or not. Your duty then 
is, that whoever it is that fills your place when you lie 
mouldering six feet in the ground, shall receive also his 
proportion of your present means in the best form. If you 
have not this as an object, you 'd far better sink your gold 
in the nearest tarn. 

How then can a State — for that individual represents 
a State — best transmit its wealth to future generations, 

^ Horace Mann. 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 35 

to whose charge for all time are committed its lands and 
its resources of wealth? This is the most momentous of 
questions, but, for all that, is easily answered. It should 
he left in that form which will tend to multiply its pos- 
sessions* This is the object of all Political Economy; there 
can be no greater. 

What form can be better, then, for making over to our 
children that which we hold in trust for them than edu- 
cation? " Let the purse be emptied into the head, and there 
need be no fear of bankruptcy,'' said Ben. Franklin, who 
although he reached the topmost point by means of his 
own power, knew all the better how hard a path that was, 
and how few there would be who would travel it like him. 
The man builds houses and barns and ploughs the soil for 
those who shall follow him ; the State is now piercing our 
mountains and valleys with internal improvements, but it 
is also for those who come after her present inhabitants, 
and who also will, in their time, do for their descendants 
what seemeth most prosperous. But may not one, and the 
best, way of improving this property for them be to con- 
vert it into education. Depend on it, no suits will ever be 
able to take away that reversion ; and it will be confirmed 
on your heirs and SLSsigns forever, for no educated man is 
so blind to his relations or interests as not to educate his 
children. 

"But I have no children, and wherefore should I be 
taxed for the education of others," etc. — that's the way 
of the objector's twaddle. Now the thing is all as long as 
broad : You have a farm here that consists of 800 acres, 
say, which is appreciated by you at about $20 per acre. 
Your county adopts Free Schools, and your tax on that 
land is increased ten per cent, making somewhere about 
116 more for your pay on it per annum. Now as true as 



S6 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

you own it, the establishment of Free Schools in your 
vicinage will increase that land in value in course of time 
to $50. Of course, this is conjecture as to definiteness, but 
not as to principle. During the struggle for Free Schools 
in New Haven, Connecticut, "there was a wealthy man 
there," says Mr. Mandeville, " to whom the friends of the 
measure applied, and he heartily cooperated with them. 
He was seen on this and that corner of the street, talking 
earnestly to a group of the people, and he made this reply 
to those who objected to the right of compelling the rich 
to contribute to the education of the poor: "My property 
at Worcester, Massachusetts, has increased in value fifteen 
per cent by the Free School system ; that is the way I was 
ruined there, and I wish to be ruined in the same manner 
here!" But even suppose that no such miraculous meta- 
morphosis will take place in the intrinsic value of your 800 
acres of land. You now pay largely for an overseer of your 
domains not less cost than a dollar to every acre! Now 
you will be able to give over this, in so far as guarding 
your premises from encroachment is concerned. Mr. May 
tells us the following anecdote of General Harrison, late 
President of the United States. His gardener requested 
him to purchase a watch-dog, to keep the boys from steal- 
ing all his fruit. The old hero answered with wisdom: 
" Get a schoolmaster and you will save the boys and the 
grapes, too!" The tax for supporting prisoners in your 
county jail will also fall short. So it is your interest, 
although childless, to pay these taxes. 

But objector No. 2 here puts in, " I tell you I look on 
this education of your wishing as dubious ! I doubt if it *s 
going to keep our penitentiary empty; it didn't keep Dr. 
Webster from swinging, at any events. You'll have to 
say to religion, ' Get thee behind me ! ' for so sure as you 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 37 

introduce a word of it in the schoolroom, you'll make it 
a conclave of hornets. And then, again, about health, I 
question if it would n't be all the better if there were less 
education ; the savage is far stronger than we. And then, 
furthermore, I have some cavil with the association of 
sexes," etc., etc. 

Now, my friend (for I have far more patience with you 
than with our first objector), just let us consider your 
objections. Have you ever duly investigated the relation 
of crime to popular education ? Read this which we copy 
from the file of the New York " Tribune " of some forgot- 
ten date ultimo. 

To THE Editor of the "Tribune," — It has been 
frequently alleged of late, on the part of opponents of 
Universal Education through schools free to all, that the 
progress of Crime in our own and other lands has kept 
pace with the advancement and diffusion of Knowledge, 
and that the records of our prisons and penitentiaries, if 
carefully examined, would show that a large proportion 
of their inmates were from the educated classes. I have 
recently investigated the Official Returns made to the Sec- 
retary of State by the Sheriffs of the several Counties 
of the convictions had in the several Courts of Record 
throughout the State, and in the Courts of Special Ses- 
sions in the respective cities, from the years 1840 to 1848, 
both inclusive, comprising a period of nine years, and find 
the following result: — 

The whole number of persons returned as having been 
convicted of crimes in the several counties and cities of 
the State, during the period referred to, was 27,949; of 
these 1182 were returned as having received a " common 
education," 414 as having "a tolerably good education," 
and 128 only as "well educated." Of the remaining 26,- 
225, about half were able merely to read and write. The 
residue were destitute of any education whatever. 

Assuming, therefore, the standard of the returning offi- 
cer, as to what constitutes a good education, to be correct, 



38 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

only 128 out of nearly 28,000 of tlie inmates of our pris- 
ons and penitentiaries are from the educated classes ; and 
only about one in sixteen had received an ordinary com- 
mon school education. Facts like these are worth more 
than a thousand vague declamations as to the efficiency of 
Education, with reference to the progress of Crime. 

Yours respectfully, S. S. Randall. 

AiiBANT, June 21, 1850. 

We have before us an interesting volume just issued. 
It is "The Fourth Report of the Board of Education of 
the State of Maine, 1850. Augusta: William T. John- 
son.'* The able and eloquent truths it contains are from 
the pen of the Hon. E. M. Thurston (present Secretary 
of the Board in that State). He also has something for 
our second objector, and much better charged than we 
could have done. 

CRIMINALS AND CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS 

Another half -needless draught upon the revenue of the 
State is the expense of taking care of criminals. About 
f 15,000 annually are paid from the State treasury for 
criminal prosecutions, and probably about as much more 
is expended by the counties for the same purpose. Our 
criminals must be taken care of after conviction. Jails 
and prisons must be built, and officers must be appointed 
to take charge of them. Since Maine became a sepa- 
rate State, $221,502.87 have been drawn from the public 
treasury on account of the State prison, making an annual 
outlay of more than $7000 over and above the profits 
accruing from the labour of the convicts. 

A large majority of all the convicts, who have been 
caged in jails and prisons, might have been saved from 
degradation and crime, might have been made industrious 
and respectable citizens, if during childhood and youth 
their physical and mental powers had been rightly devel- 
oped and their moral nature properly cultivated. This 
point has been so frequently argued, so clearly demon- 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 39 

strated, and so generally admitted by the community, that 
we shall not stop to discuss it. The question commends 
itself to every man's common sense, whether upon the 
whole it is the cheapest and best policy to make criminals 
and support them at the public charge, or to control the 
primordial causes and make them honest and useful mem- 
bers of society. 

Courts of justice constitute our principal State ma- 
chinery for the suppression of crime. We select our ablest 
and wisest men for judges. We add jurors, witnesses, and 
executive officers. The people, through the legislature, 
define the crime and announce the penalty, confer on the 
courts the dread power over property, personal liberty, 
and even life itself. This machinery is worked at vast ex- 
pense. The object is to hunt down the transgressor and 
protect society from his ravages. Of all this mighty array 
of power, of wisdom and expense, not a tithe is aimed at 
the removal of the cause. It only attempts to alleviate the 
effects. When the incendiary applies the torch to the build- 
ing, the whole community are on the alert to detect and 
punish the criminal. All recognize the burning brand as 
the antecedent, and conflagration as the consequent, but 
neither judge nor jury take any cognizance of the relation 
between the early education of the incendiary and the 
state of mind that impelled him to the fatal deed. During 
all the formative process of the child the court must stand 
by and look on. Though the elements of perjury, of theft, 
of robbery, of murder, are daily insinuated into the very 
fibres of that child, the court has no preventive injunction 
to issue. It must lie in ambush till the theft is committed, 
till the innocent are slain, till the assassin has perpetrated 
his deed of violence. And even then the court has no power 
to recompense the injured, to restore life to the murderer's 
victim ; its only emollients for assuaging the anguish of 
these social wounds are fines, imprisonment, and death. 

Does n't that cut deep, — deep into the consciences of 
two thirds of the code-makers of this green earth! Is it 
not enough to turn the heart that thinks of it sick ! Is it 
not truer of our Virginia than of any other State f 



40 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

But you say a scientific education did not keep Profes- 
sor Webster from committing an atrocious murder and 
suffering the penalty therefor. Very well ! neither did be- 
ing one of Christ's disciples hinder Judas from being a 
vile traitor ; now shall I, for that, renounce the Christian 
persuasion ? It has been well said that the fact of Dr. 
Webster's learning and place is what has excited the mar- 
vel of the world, whereas if it had been done by an illiter- 
ate backwoodsman it would not have been unusual : this 
proves that men everywhere recognize high education as 
the preventive of crime. The statistics of the relation of 
crime to ignorance in the Old World will not, we trust, 
be forgotten. 

Now for the second count in the answer : Religion must 
be ignored. Now this is the theme most harped upon, and 
very dishonestly, by the opponents of this system. Educa- 
tion goes on the ground that Siu j peculiar religious tenets 
shall be taught at home, and that general doctrines of vir- 
tue and morality shall be the limit of the school. Well, 
now, this is right. Where is the parent who would sur- 
render the privilege of teaching his children, on those mo- 
mentous questions, himself ? How do you expect the child 
to study the precepts of the Bible, if he be not taught to 
read ? What set of school-books on earth are there which 
are not replete with reading of a religious character ? 

As to the third objection, about the comparative health 
of the savage and the civilized man, it sounds like Rip 
Van Winkle's declaring himself a good loyal subject of 
his Majesty to the indignation of the new-made republican 
voters. There is no prospect of a society's returning to the 
savage condition : so the question is, what does our civil- 
ized community need ? We have before spoken of this : 
man will find out soon that Minerva and Hygeia are one 1 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 41 

The last objection is frequently urged, but is specious. 
With one voice the reports of the system establish the 
belief that there need be no apprehension from the pro- 
miscuous association of boys and girls. The only way, in- 
deed, to preserve a precinct sufficiently sacred for Woman 
is in the highest enlightenment. When men look back at 
the primitive ages, and on through the Feudal, the In- 
quisitorial, the Revolutionary, how is it that each and all 
exclaim : " What has civilization done for Woman ! " It 
has changed her from brutish degradation to a holy de- 
gree in the regard of the upright. 

There are, as we have said, very many other cavils at 
the system, which are usually modifications of these which 
we have glanced at but slightly. Objections and objectors 
are rarer now, however, than they 've ever been. Henry IV 
once enacted a sumptuary law prohibiting the wearing of 
jewelry. His penalties availed not to make damsels and 
exquisites give up their rings and breastpins. He wittily 
made another decree, exempting from the^T's^ all prosti- 
tutes and pickpockets. Next day jewelry was found only 
in the brokers' shops. Society has passed some generally 
understood laws, somewhat analogous to this, concerning 
objectors to Education. 

IV. A WORD TO THE GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION 

This State of Virginia is, in some regards, the most 
wonderful 61,000 square miles that have ever been noted 
out on earth. Our sky is such as only floats over Italy or 
gleams on the preserved canvas of Camoens ; our scenery 
along the lowlands of the east vieing with the Florentine 
fields and English parks in their beauty, and overreach- 
ing any other in their lovely streams, is only the more de- 
lightful beside the sublime mountain view, such as never 



42 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

was mirrored in the bosom of the Rhine to the eye of H. 
Zschokke, or the dream of Madame Radcliffe. Honest old 
John Rolf, the husband of our colonial angel Pocahontas, 
wrote thus to his " King's most sacred ma' tie," in 1616 : — 

Virginia is the same as it was, I meane for the good- 
nes of the seate, and the fertileness of the land, and will 
no doubt so contynue to the world's end, — a countrey as 
worthy good report, as can be declared by the pen of the 
best writer. A country spacious and wide, capable of 
many hundred thousands of inhabitants. For the soil most 
fertile to plant in, for ayre fresh and temperate, somewhat 
hotter in summer, and not altogether so cold in winter as 
in England, yet so agreeable it is to our constitutions, that 
now 'tis more rare to heare of a man's death then in Eng- 
land amongst so many people as are there resident. For 
water, most wholesome and verie plentifuU, and for fayre 
navigable rivers and good harbours, no country in Christen- 
dom, in so small a circuite, is so well stored. [But here 
the big-hearted man has to lament that there is no exalted 
public spirit, that the colonists seem " employed onely in 
planting and curing tobacco," etc., etc., etc. ; but ends in 
a hopeful strain :] God's hand hath been mightie in the 
preservacoun thereof hitherto; what neede we then to 
feare, but to goe up at once as a peculiar people, marked 
and chosen by the finger of God, to possess it, for undoubt- 
edly he is with us.^ 

What Rolf said of its physical endowments then is no 
less true now; indeed, every observer will confirm his 
statement that it is so now^ and his prophecy that it will 
"no doubt so continue to the world's end." 

There is no segment of country on earth that has such 
resources. With a valley teeming with singular riches 

^ The old paper, whence these brief extracts, is a faithful transcript of 
the Royal MS. in the British Museum, titled " John Rolf's Relation of the 
State of Virginia, 17th Century." It has intrinsic marks which show it to 
have been written May, 1616, about the time Sir Thomas Dale left the 
colony. 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 43 

dividing it ; with a piedmont country not only amply coni- 
pensating the plough but hiding in its bowels a vein of 
gold bright enough to lure a California Yankee, and not 
only widening from the Rapidan to the Ridge, but coex- 
tensive with the State and piercing our neighbours ! ^ 
What a country for produce ! for as far as all this wealth, 
navigable streams stretch out from the coast as so many 
fingers of a hand, seeking to carry our home-product to 
the greatest and best markets of the world. How long shall 
they stretch out those fingers in vain ? Oh, how much of 
good with us is not good from inactivity ! 

To instance now : In the range of counties, Botetourt, 
Rockbridge, etc., there is a vein of iron as susceptible of 
cultivation and of affording large revenue as any other. 
Virginia is now building some 700 miles of railroading ; 
the iron on those roads then, at the cost, say, of 140 per 
ton, will be a draft of $3,000,000 on the state funds. 
Now, of course, all these 20,000 tons of iron are to be 
imported, whilst we have them here in our midst, " locked 
up," in the words of the Christiansburg Convention's ad- 
dress, " in natural barriers and excluded from all partici- 
pation in those markets, where under different circum- 
stances they might defy competition." Here, then, is a 
resource of wealth at waste. 

" Who, then, shall show us any good? " that is the cry 
of the State. 

^' Reform — Reform in everything r"* "See how we 
grovel." 

Why, if the mighty works that Nature hath wrought 
for us had been done in the formation of any commercial 

1 At the late Assembly of the American Scientific Convention at New 
Haven, Professor Rogers read a paper on the gold formation of Virginia, 
■wherein it was traced in one direction far into North Carolina, and in the 
other so far as York, Pennsylvania. 



44 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

Tyre and Sidon on earth, they would have grown long 
ago into wealth and power ; *' whilst we sit here deliber- 
ating in cold debate " concerning our future place, whether 
it shall be a worthy and a stately one, or other. Nearly 
all of us feel it now subordinate. The mechanic of Vir- 
ginia finds that for some reason or other the Yankee or 
the German comes hither with the prejudice of being a 
stranger, and nevertheless outstrips him. The farmer here 
finds the same with him ; feeling continually his own in- 
feriority in labour-saving invention. All of our productive 
labourers feel it with heaviness and great emotion, and the 
result of this pervading public spirit is that you, Gentle- 
men of the Convention, are gathered together at the me- 
tropolis of Virginia this fall, A. D. 1850. The people have 
faith that you alone can " show us any good" ; and they 
are anxiously and eagerly awaiting you. 

The people have elected non-conservatives to the fram- 
ing of their Constitution. The chief reforms will be a 
sudden and a large extension of the right of suffrage, 
and an equally sudden and large increase of elective 
power with the people. Here, then, is a singular growth 
of popular responsibility. Are you willing, as conscien- 
tious, reflecting statesmen, to award this to the State, 
without effort, to undermine that fearful proportion of us 
who cannot read nor write f 

Look for a moment at some consideration of our present 
system. 1. Our present Code is not only extremely defec- 
tive in this, as well as many other respects, but is also op- 
pressive. There is no State in the Union where the Liter- 
ary Fund is more wrongfully distributed than ours. But 
just look at its provisions for those counties which wish 
to adopt Free Schools. With all deference to the wise men 
"who framed this Code do we call it defective and oppres- 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 45 

sive ; they probably did the best under their instructions. 
We will copy the sections for which we have space of 
brief comment. 

OF FKEE SCHOOLS 

How adopted ; Commissioners elected ; tJieir Duties, 

§ 1. The council of any city or town, having a corpo- 
ration court, may adopt the free school system provided 
for in this chapter, and thereupon lay off the city or town 
into districts, and may afterwards revise or alter such dis- 
tricts. It shall, upon such adoption, and annually after- 
wards, elect for every such district a commissioner, who 
shall continue in office until his successor is appointed ; 
and it may fill any vacancy happening in the said office. 

§ 2. On the petition of one fourth of such of the white 
male citizens aged 21 years, resident in any county with- 
out the limits of any such city or town, as may be entitled 
to vote in the election of a delegate from such county, or 
shall have been assessed with a part of the county levy 
within the preceding year, and actually paid the same, the 
court of the said county shall order a vote to be taken yb/* 
or against the said free school system, on some certain 
day (other than a general election day) within six months, 
at all the places within such county at which polls are re- 
quired to be opened for such delegate. A copy of such 
order shall immediately be posted by the clerk at the front 
door of the court-house ; and every such resident, so en- 
titled to vote for delegate or so assessed, may vote at any 
poll opened under the said order. 

§ 3. The poll shall be taken, superintended, conducted, 
certified, and returned to the court of the county by the 
officers, in the manner, under the regulations, and subject 
to the penalties prescribed in the seventh and forty-sev- 
enth chapters, as far as the same may he applicable. 

§ 4. If two thirds of the votes be in favor of adopting 
the free school system, the said court shall have the fact 
entered on the minutes of their proceedings, and order a 
copy of such entry to be delivered to the existing board of 
school commissioners of such county. 



46 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

§ 12. Any white child, between the ages of six and 
twenty-one, resident in a district, may attend and be in- 
structed at the school thereof.* 

Now it needs but a thoughtful perusal of these to see 
that their action in such a State as ours must be evil. We 
find that any town council may adopt the Free School sys- 
tem by a majority of those present (and it is well known 
that there is usually a bare quorum regularly attendant 
at most councils), for a community that needs the most 
careful legislation ; whilst a county is almost totally pre- 
cluded the adoption of the system. First, the matter has 
to be discussed before the people ; and after that is done, 
a petition of a quarter of its voters (here 's room for a 
deal more wrangling!) allows a vote to be taken, and 
after all that it 's love's labour lost, if there are not two 
thirds in favor of the bill, — and a great deal of that 
labour, too ! 

Now it is obvious that this tends to unequal pressure. 
Your town taxes will feel it, and your town poorhouses 
will feel it ; for the reason that towns will be able to adopt 
the schools, and counties not; and those who can't afford 
to educate their children in their county will pack up and 
betake them to town, and there live in misery in order to 
send their children to school. This is the way the system 
has worked. 

But section 12 is the most curious item of the Code 
of Virginia. It is curious as condensing, in the smallest 
space, all the villany of our possible Free School system. 
It should read thus : — 

§ 12. Any white childy or adult of any age, the Com- 
missioner may on proper examination see Jit to admit, 

1 Code of Virginia, Title 23, Part III, chapter Ixxxii. 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 47 

resident in a district, shall attend and he instructed at 
the school thereof, 

I suppose this Code meant to wait till all those of ad- 
vanced age around us, who are ignorant, should die off, 
and we should have a new layer. It takes care, too, to skip 
over the very age when schools can be most potent; and 
takes care, too, to subject itself to any whim of the igno- 
rant, by making education of our youth optional with 
parents. 

2. It must be manifest to the right-minded economist, 
that a precisely analogous evil to that sought out in the 
comparative method of adopting District Schools in the 
counties and boroughs is also attendant, in the natural 
order of things, on the conditions of Free Schools in the 
State. There must be an unnatural determination of 
paupers and of high prices to those counties which adopt 
the system; which produces an abnormal state of society 
there. This is the invariable experience of this State. An 
argument has been brought against the schools from this 
fact, people not seeing that the evil belongs no more to 
them as an effect, than night to day. It is the result of 
the extreme disguise of a good sj'-stem, until it is no longer 
itself. 

Members of the Convention, it is your duty to overrule 
this Code in its provisions, and to plant the system in the 
Constitution. If you will examine you will find that not 
one State has succeeded in establishing and maintaining 
common schools or any available plan of education, except 
those who have put it in their Constitutions — not one! 
It has been a system of Sisyphean stone-rolling with them 
as with us, only they 've come nearer the mountain-top. 

You need not fear the misrepresenting of the people in 
this matter. There is a strong feeling availing with them 



48 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

for the reform. The excitement last winter at Fredericks- 
burg originated, to my personal knowledge, in some half- 
dozen illiterate mechanics. I attended the meetings on 
that subject in that town, and there can be no issue as to 
whether the people there desired Free Schools ! We have 
a decided leaning to the doctrine of voxpopuli vox dei; 
and we have shown this to be the voice of God that all 
should be instructed, and that this is the sole way to the 
persistence of his mandate and will. 

There is no room for conservatism here. Conservatism 
is a mean, at least a suspicious thing ; a coverlet under 
which Ignorance and Hypocrisy may always be found at 
times, associated perhaps with some good. Truth and Er- 
ror are the two attributes of earthly motive and object; 
if Truth becomes conservative of Error, it partakes of its 
nature. Good and Evil are separate, like oil and water, 
for although when they are in the same vessel, if potash is 
there they will unite, they will no longer be the same in 
purity or impurity that they were before. Right cannot 
he compromised and remain so. The miserable place that 
we now occupy is a conservative one. No ! You are not 
so in giving the people power, and if you are settled in 
the allowance of its qualification, knowledge, it is most 
perilous. 

Gentlemen, many of you glory in being disciples of our 
most far-seeing statesman, Jefferson, and warm advocates 
of his principles. 

Hear what our own great Jefferson said. " I prepared," 
says he, "three bills for the revisal, proposing three distinct 
grades of education, reaching all classes : 1st, Elementary 
schools for all children, generally, rich and poor ; 2d, Col- 
leges for a middle degree of instruction, calculated for the 
common purposes of life ; and 3d, An ultimate grade for 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 49 

teaching the sciences generally, and in their highest de-, 
gree." " One provision for the elementary school bill was 
that the expenses of these schools should be borne by the 
inhabitants of the county, in proportion to their general 
tax-rates.'^ " I considered four of these bills (of which the 
school bill was one) as forming a system," whereby a 
foundation would be " laid for a government truly repub- 
lican.^^ The people, " by the bill for the general education, 
would be qualified to understand their rights, to maintain 
them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self- 
government ; and aU this would be effected without the 
violation of a single natural right of any one individual 
citizen,^'* 

" Education," said the " Edinburgh Review," indors- 
ing these sentiments soon after the passage of the Reform 
Bill had greatly multiplied the voters of England and 
popularized the government, — " Education, as the essen- 
tial condition of the social and intellectual well-being of 
the people, cannot fail of commanding the immediate at- 
tention of the legislature. Otherwise, indeed, the recent 
boon to the lower orders, of political power, would be a 
worthless, perhaps a dangerous gift. Intelligence is the 
condition of freedom." * 

We have opportunity here in Virginia to carry on 
the most perfect system of common schools on earth. We 
have a chance for dispersing information over the State 
like the wind ; indeed, the figure is more precise than is 
apparent at first sight, when we consider the relations our 
University at Charlottesville might be made to bear to the 

1 In this connection we refer the reader to the dignified views of Lord 
Bacon {Advancement of Learning). And also those of Mr. Macaulay on the 
effects of the Church-power, before the Reformation, and its superiority to 
the brute force which preceded it. 



50 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

State Districts. A regular trade-wind could be set in mo- 
tion that would dissipate a vast deal of narcotic miasma 
from our midst. If instead of incurring debts in the dig- 
ging of canals, the building of monuments, the maintenance 
of militia, and the dressing up of cadets, with tomfoolery 
of various other sorts, the State would enter earnestly into 
the work of preparing men to give intelligent votes and 
verdicts, we would see this State blossoming as no rose 
ever blossomed. 

Gentlemen of the Convention, you see how we are here 
as Tantalus with an El Dorado at our finger-tips, but no 
better for us there than if it were in the regions of the 
Moon. It is for you to speak the Sesame that shall unfold 
to us this untold wealth; you can now speak it! 

You will all live to rue the day that you enacted such 
a radical Constitution, unless you shall plant in it like- 
wise the germ of its safety and its beneficence. It is the 
painful result of its absence that has called you, men of 
distinguished ability, to help us in this third effort of 
ours to rise up above the Pelion on Ossa which have 
hitherto weighed us down. 

Nought less than this sad war, 
Could bring so great a number of renowned 
Heroes within the limits of a camp ! ^ 

Let, then, the cause of education, virtue, and thrift rise 
victorious ! We are better prepared for this reform than 
for any that has been proposed. Yet but one of your 
number has come forth its champion. I have seen but 
one note on the subject amongst the hundreds of ad- 
dresses that the canvass called forth; it was in a small 
German card published in Richmond by Mr. A. J. 
Crane. For the sake of that alone I would he were in the 
1 Schiller. 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 51 

Convention. Let but a thoughtful spirit pervade you on 
this subject, and I fear not! 

A Greek poet once inscribed on a perfect statue of 
Niobe, whom Apollo turned into stone as she grieved for 
the destruction of her offspring: "The Gods turned me 
from life to stone, but Praxiteles hath brought me from 
stone to life!" Now iVe^^ec^, with her Medusa visage, 
has changed the Mother of the Gracchi, as we delight to 
term our State, into stone. The body is lovely, strong; 
but a feeble life beats through it, and a feebler mind 
guides it. John Rolf's words are as true of us now as if 
he were a prophet of to-day. We look to your body as 
to the Praxiteles beneath whose chisel we shall revive 
again to life and glory and beauty as did the daughter of 
Tantalus. 

But this is the most critical as well as hopeful period 
of Virginia's history. Gentlemen, you are committing an 
uncertain "bark to a rough sea" when you launch us 
forth with our new Constitution. The winds seem strong 
and fair for the voyage, the ship seems pleasant and taut 
of rigging. Have we a true chart, a watchful pilot, intel- 
ligent and strong mariners? 

Think you this new-made ship of state will have no 
Scylla and Charybdis to pass, no Maelstrom to avoid? 
Believe me, these things, as you know, must come. And 
oh, when the winds and the waves beat about it, let 
Popular Education be there to rise up, as another Divine 
Spirit did, and calm the threatening elements with the 
words, ^'Peace^ he still T^ 

APPENDIX 

We give with gratification the subjoined letter from 
the distinguished and talented editor of the only literary 



52 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

periodical of the State, and of the best in this country. We 
addressed a letter to Mr. Thompson in ignorance of his 
opinions on that subject, and simply as one who from his 
position might be expected to know the wants of the 
State. 

HiCHMOKD, September 26, 1850. 

My DEAR Sir, — I beg to acknowledge the receipt of 
your recent letter, in which you do me the honour to ask 
my views on the subject of Common-School Education in 
Virginia, so expressed that they may be appended to a 
pamphlet which you propose to publish. I am not vain 
enough to think that anything I can say will add weight 
to the matured reflections and deliberate opinions which 
you will submit to the public, or in any degree promote 
the cause of our State Education, — an object so dear to 
my heart that I might otherwise be tempted to trouble 
you with a more extended letter than would be desirable. 
However, I have no hesitation in giving you my views 
for what they are worth, and I shall do so in as few 
words as possible. 

It cannot be denied, I think, that the -pvesei\t primary 
school system is radically defective. Considered as a plan 
of State Education, it is both inadequate and inefficient; 
not offering its advantages to anything like the number 
of children to be educated, and failing to secure the 
attendance of those within its reach.* The reports of the 
Second Auditor, on the condition of the Literary Fund, 
are filled annually with the bitter complaints of the Com- 
missioners throughout the State, as to the melancholy 
working of the existing system. Many children are sent 
off from the schools before they have acquired even the 
simplest rudiments of knowledge, because the meagre pit- 
tance of the State bounty has been exhausted. Many 
others are kept at home by their parents, who disdain 
to accept for them educational relief upon terms which 
will compromise the name of the family, and stamp them as 

^ Does it not, friend T., invite those who have no pride nor principle to 
squander away their money, leaving the suffering to the county funds, and 
their children to be taunted as " indigents." 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 53 

paupers. Statistics could be brought forward in frightful 
array to sustain the charges I have made against the pri- 
mary school system; but this is not the place for them, 
nor is it at all necessary that they should be adduced. If, 
in regarding the gloomy condition of affairs, we cannot 
altogether subdue the regretful wish that our law-makers 
of a few years ago had devised a better plan, we can 
yet call loudly upon those who now serve us to open their 
eyes to the vital importance of the question. 

In what way, you may ask, can the evil be remedied ? 
I answer, that the Free School system, which has served so 
excellent a purpose in the counties of Northampton, Nor- 
folk, King George, Jefferson, Kanawha, Ohio, and Henry, 
and in the town of Portsmouth, is the only means that 
seems to me adequate to the desired end. I cannot here 
enter upon the discussion of the questions that underlie 
the Free School system ; but I will say of the most im- 
portant of them — the principle involved in a plan of tax- 
ation for educational purposes — that it is too clearly 
founded in reason to need any lengthened argument in its 
support. You have probably anticipated and satisfactorily 
refuted the objections to this principle, in your pamphlet. 

In conclusion, permit me to say that I hail the increas- 
ing attention paid to this subject by the young men of the 
State as a happy augury of better days in store for us. I 
trust that you may have the satisfaction to know that your 
own efforts in the cause have not been without their good 
results, and that we may both live to see the day when 
Virginia — to borrow the conceit of a lamented Southern 
statesman,^ — shall place a schoolhouse by every fountain, 
and cause the one to be as free as the other. 

With great respect, truly and faithfully yours, 

Jno. R. Thompson. 

MoNCURB D. Conway, Esq. 

We cannot forbear publishing an extract from the head 
of the Law School at the University, who has " done the 
State much service " by his untiring efforts. The letter 

^ Sargent S. Prentiss. 



54 FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 

was in no wise designed for any eye but our own ; but we 
trust we shall be pardoned for its publication. We ear- 
nestly commend it to the friends of the system in this State. 
University of Vikgikia, September 23, 1850. 

... I am persuaded that the cause of popular educa- 
tion has suffered much amongst us for want of permanent 
materials of information. Successive thinkers and investi- 
gators have left no accessible memorials or charts whereby 
the researches of others might be stimulated or directed. 
Each inquirer has stood alone, rearing for himself an inde- 
pendent scheme, sustained by his own unguided and un- 
aided reflections. I rejoice that this is to be so no longer. 
I trust that every point will be fortified as it is gained ; that 
the scattered rags will be gathered, and a depository formed 
whence continual emanations of light will show us when 
and where to strike, thus making our progress sure, even 
though it be slow. 

I have unhesitating confidence that we shall ultimately 
succeed. Though no professed democrat, I trust firmly in 
the good sense and good dispositions of my countrymen ; 
and as the claims of Free Schools can bear to be discussed 
and understood, they cannot fail to enlist, sooner or later, 
the intelligent support of the people, even of those who at 
first view are opposed to them. The instruction of all 
classes of the community in the elements of knowledge is 
a sacred debt of which every sort of government is bound 
to acquit itself, but of free, popular goverment it is one 
of the necessary conditions. Free Schools are not only 
called for by the general good, but also by the private ad- 
vantage of a very large majority of every class in the com- 
munity ; and this can be made, and will become apparent 
as soon as we all are familiarized with the facts of this 
subject. It must be remembered that, until within a very 
few years past, this subject was never talked of amongst 
us. The workings and usefulness of Free Schools were un- 
known. The progress within ten years past in knowledge 
and in interest has been surprising. We Virginians are a 
cautious people; not prone to novelties when first pre- 
sented, and much averse to laying aside old usages. It is 



FREE SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA 55 

not wonderful, therefore, that we should reluctantly and 
slowly admit such a revolution in our system of general 
elementary education as Free Schools involve. I wish I 
could see some organization devised which would enable 
us systematically to complete the work now happily begun, 
of disposing our fellow citizens to countenance improve- 
ments which have elsewhere been tried with success. 

I earnestly hope that our labour will not be remitted in 
this cause so dear to the greatest of the venerable patriots 
who have gone before us ; and that we shall not suffer 
ourselves to be disheartened by temporary indifference or 
opposition. 

I am, with much respect, your ob't serv't, 

John B. Minor. 

Note. — Since the foregoing was written the Convention has adjourned 
until the 1st Monday of January, 1851. A Committee on Education has 
been appointed ; and, on motion of Mr. Ferguson, they have been instructed 
to inquire into the expediency of establishing Free Schools in Virginia. " I 
thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not 
have these hundred years ! " So spake old Governor Berkeley in 1671. 
Well, his hundred years have elapsed, and we have printing ; now for the 
Free Schools I When will the members of that Committee (the most im- 
portant of all) have such a chance of immortalizing themselves and benefit- 
ing their State ? 

We have also the gratification of announcing the fulfilment of our pre- 
diction concerning New York ; that State having sustained by a majority of 
about 25,000 the Free School system, committed to the ballot by Act of 
Assembly (AprU, 1850). 



THE GOLDEN HOUR 



MONCURE D. CONWAY 

AUTHOH OF "THE REJECTED STONE" 

Impera parendo 



BOSTOIT 
TICKNOR AND FIELDS 



Once upon a time an innkeeper, awakened at midnight 
by caterwaulings in the hall below, was filled with wrath, 
and, leaping from his bed, seized a poker, and rushed 
downstairs to demolish the cats. But he did not wait to 
light a lamp for the expedition. The unexpected results 
were, that in striking at the cats he broke the hall-clock 
and the hall-lamp ; then falling, he broke his right arm, 
broke two teeth out, and sprained an ankle. 

In fine, he hit and hurt nearly everything except the 
cats. 

At such a cost the innkeeper learned that blindfold 
zeal can do but harm. 

Twenty millions of men and women, whose hands ply 
daily sword or needle, compelled by a purpose too great 
for them to define ; a million men, marching and eagerly 
awaiting the order to march toward the valley of death ; 
manifold Abrahams, standing beside their sons, whom their 
faith has bound and laid on altars of sacrifice ; — are not 
these signs of a vitality and zeal in any nation adequate 
for any emergency? 

But where is the lamp for these? How many more 
blunders and bruises must we have ere we demand light 
upon this stairway, on which we can climb, down which 
we may fall? Thus far in this war nearly everything has 
been zealously struck, except the real foe of this nation. 

The writer of these pages, having for a long time studied 
this wild disease at the South, which has made that sec- 
tion into its own image and likeness, — having been brought 



by destiny face to face with this evil in the South, whose 
spots of contagion he has also marked on every institu- 
tion of the North, — believes that this nation has but one 
foe, and that it will be pursued by that one everywhere 
and always until it is no more evaded, but met and 
destroyed, as it easily can be. 

Convinced that the arch-traitor is not Davis, but Slav- 
ery, and that the age is worthy of an army of saviours, who 
shall, by its destruction, rescue, besides the Union, both 
slave and rebel, I send forth this work, trusting that it 
may help forward the day when the only war-cry of 
our nation shall be, — Mercy to the South! Death to 
Slavery ! 



THE GOLDEN HOUR 



POINT OF PERSPECTIVE 

THEKE are in the United States, as we are face- 
tiously termed, nearly thirty-four millions of human 
beings. 

Of these, three hundred and forty-eight thousand, or 
about one ninety-eighth of our population, are owners of 
slaves. 

This small proportion has, ever since this was a nation, 
preserved in our midst every old form which the nation 
meant to abandon ; just as if we had never had a May- 
flower or Bunker Hill, the old autocracies and aristocra- 
cies gathered about the rich board of the New World, 
the thirty-three millions and two thirds standing behind 
the chairs of the handful constituting the caste of Owners 
of Human Beings. For this ninety-eighth of their num- 
ber the millions must pour out their hard earnings to buy 
new territory; for this, pour out their blood to rob Mexico 
of territory ; for this, fear to call their souls their own. 

It made no difference that these lived in so-called Free 
States. Did they go South, they must go crawling; or 
West, it must be to build the highways of America as 
convicts with Slavery's ball and chain tied to their feet; 
whilst at home they saw their sacred growths, Eeligion, 
Education, Literature, and Social Science, with a worm 
gnawing at every core. 

At length this pitiful handful, having blighted a hun- 



62 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

dred thousand square miles of the finest land in the 
world, having kept uncultivated thrice as much more, 
having locked up in impenetrable barriers the richest 
metals on the continent, having produced an average of 
a hundred thousand white adults in every Southern State 
who cannot read or write, having kept the whole country 
in discord and hot water for two generations, have finally 
plunged it into civil war. 

Of the 348,000 owners of slaves in America, only 
18,000, at the highest estimate, are loyal; and these, 
being generally in the Border States, where large planta- 
tions of slaves are not found, own an average of two and 
a half slaves apiece. 

One fortnight's expenses of the present war would pay 
f 500 for each slave held by any person at present pre- 
tending to be loyal. 

A man once saw a fiery dragon descending the side 
of a distant mountain: starting back in terror, his eye 
reached a true point of perspective, and he perceived that 
the dragon was the minutest of spiders, which had swung 
itself down too close to his eye for right vision. 

II 

IN CHANCERY 

If there were no question of the suppression of a vast rebel- 
lion involved in the present relations of the nation with 
Slavery, it would be a momentous question how this small 
slaveholding interest has gained such an ascendency in the 
government that it is not held as attainted even by treason. 
Are these slaveholders, in number about equal to the popu- 
lation of one of our third-rate cities, the royal family of 
a king that can do no wrong ? It is a question of some 



IN CHANCERY 63 

interest to thirty millions of men, who, fondly imagining 
themselves living under a democratic government, see 
their rulers suspending universal guaranties of Liberty 
rather than touch the right of eighteen thousand men to 
do wrong, — pulling down the very rafters of the house, 
rather than destroy the rats' nests. 

Before this nation stand two classes of subjects. The 
one is a class of those who, having received every benefit 
at the hands of the nation, and no burden, have yet be- 
trayed and wronged it, and inflicted every stab they could 
upon it. The other class is of those who have received at 
the hands of the nation nothing but degradation and 
wrong, who, having every reason to betray it, have yet 
never betrayed it or harmed it. And, lo, between these 
two the nation prefers to let its severest blow fall on the 
poor man it has wronged, even when he would befriend 
it, though it strengthen the arms which threaten its life 
and the lives of its bravest children ! 

Can any one account for the infatuation which seizes 
our public men whenever they catch a glimpse of an Afri- 
can, or anything that concerns an African ? How often 
have we got hold of some man whom we thought a free- 
soiler, and sent him to Washington only to see him at the 
first step on its threshold turn out a soiler of freedom ! 
JEsop tells of a cat which had been transformed into the 
form of a woman. On one occasion, sitting at a table with 
a company, none of which suspected that she was really a 
cat, a mouse made its appearance on the floor; where- 
upon, forgetting the human part she was playing, this 
feline female leaped forward, upset the table, and devoured 
the mouse before the astonished company. Moral: In- . 
stinct will tell, under whatever forms. Never be sure that \ 
your politician, however transformed he may seem, is a 



64 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

genuine man, until you have seen a negro pass safely j 
within reach of his official paw. 

Get close enough to the interior life of an American 
politician, and you will be pretty sure to find that it stands 
in his religious faith, that the stripes in our flag have a 
Swedenborgian correspondence to stripes on a black man's 
back. It is to be feared that in this they represent the 
prejudice or the indifference of the people. Lately I saw 
two negroes thrust from a car in New York, on a night so 
stormy and bitter that it would have been cruel to expel 
a brute. A dog in the same car slept at the feet of his 
master undisturbed. 

Thus is Slavery rotting the very heart of Manhood 
throughout this country. 

We have learned nothing of Slavery, if we have not 
learned this truth, to wit, — that Slavery has no will of 
its own. There has been a delusion in this country, that 
Slavery is a free agent ; and when, in Kansas, the ballot 
of Freedom was responded to by the torch and bowie-knife ; 
when, in the whole nation, the ballot was replied to by a 
bomb into Fort Sumter, we began to awake to the percep- 
tion that Slavery has no free choice. Slavery is more a 
slave than any man it fetters. It had no choice but to fire 
on Sumter. Chemistry does not more by fixed laws make 
a boulder, than by fixed laws Slavery hurls it at the head 
of Wendell Phillips. Slavery is in the coils of Fate and 
must, if it exists, obey its own dark laws. 

The other day a man — and that is a rarer creature than 
is generally supposed — stood upon the soil of Virginia. 
Slavery said, "He is firm, truthful, intelligent, — the 
gamest man I ever saw," — then proceeded to hang him. 
Slavery would have hung him had it been Jesus Christ, 
because it must. 



IN CHANCERY 65 

The common sense of the country has already come to , 
the conclusion that Slavery is the cause of the war. But 
it must be seen that war is the legitimate appendage and 
weapon of Slavery ; that Slavery is perpetual war ; that this 
war is but the effort to extend Slavery's already existing 
martial law over the entire government. Only by military 
power has Slavery been retained in this country. In the 
cities of the North, when its claim to some fugitive was to 
be asserted, we have seen its martial array ; but this was 
only the cropping out of the constant state of things in 
the South. Nightly patrols ; the punishment of men from 
the North without process of law ; the frequent suppres- 
sion of the usual laws for reasons of state ; the suppression 
of all discussion concerning Slavery ; — these are possible 
only where martial law is habitual. The present war is 
only the extension and exasperation of what has been all 
along the method in the war of the strong race against the 
weak in the South. 

It would seem, then, in the light of simple equity, that 
the natural method of suppressing Slavery's rebellion 
would be found in some way of dealing with Slavery 
itself. Nature has the penalties of violating her laws 
always in the direction of the transgression itself ; a fall 
bruises, putting one's hand in fire is followed by a burn ; 
and every habitual sin, as licentiousness or drunkenness, 
is followed by a train of diseases peculiarly its own, and 
growing out of its own organic character. There is no con- 
fusion of penalties; one is not burnt by falling, nor bruised 
by fire. 

This way we have of seizing the sword on every occa- 
sion to punish or meet indiscriminately all attacks is bar- 
barous. In the laws of this universe, where every sin has 
its own penalty, the retribution never fails of being effect- 



66 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

ual. The child which has once put its hand to the fire 
never repeats the experiment. Nations and men must trans- 
late these great laws of Nature, and then their defences 
will never be of doubtful strength. 

The rebellion of Slavery should at once have been 
followed by our only logical reply, — the abolition of 
Slavery. 

Suppose that, in reply to that bomb which fell into Fort 
Sumter, our President had seized the pen, instead of the 
sword, and written such a proclamation as this : — 

" Slavery, from being a domestic institution in certain 
States, with which the government had nothing to do, hav- 
ing become the common foe of all the States, with which 
the government has everything to do, it is hereby declared 
that all the slaves in this country are free, and they are 
hereby justified in whatever measures they may find neces- 
sary to maintain their freedom. Loyal masters are assured 
that they shall be properly compensated for losses result- 
ing from this decree." 

Every rebel owning a slave, or living within miles of 
one, would, as by the wand of an enchanter, have remained 
spellbound at his fireside, where he ought to be. There 
could have been no war. 

Ill 

IN COMMON LAW 

During a residence of some years at Washington, I found 
that there was a clause in the Constitution used there, 
which I have vainly looked for in my copy : it ran as fol- 
lows : — 

" Art. — , Sec. -. Any legislation on the part of Con- 
gress liable to the charge of being morally right shall be 



IN COMMON LAW 67 

held as 'prima facie unconstitutional ; this, however, shall, 
not invalidate such legislation, if it can be proved that its 
moral character is simply a coincidence." 

I have seen good Republicans grow red in the face with 
showing that they were maintaining freedom simply for 
strategy or expediency, and indignantly avowing that they 
were not actuated by any motives of humanity or recti- 
tude. 

So we must not dwell upon any such little point as the 
moral ulceration of a whole nation, so much as upon the 
prospective waving of the Stars and Stripes on the custom- 
house in Charleston. 

But, even in the eye of the organic law, we maintain 
that the right to abolish Slavery is antecedent to the 
right of taking the sword. It is the duty of the President 
to " suppress insurrections " ; but there is no intimation 
that the Executive shall, in suppressing insurrections, be 
confined to the method of bloodshed. If, indeed, bloodshed 
is the only method or the best method, he is sworn not to 
shrink from that ; but if the end could be reached by any- 
thing more humane, it is his duty to remember that the 
sword is termed the ultima ratio — the last resort of 
states. 

If in the present case there was a probability that the 
insurrection could be put down without bloodshed, say by 
slaveryshed, it were the legal duty of our President to 
try the slaveryshed first. When the alternative is the 
dreadful one of civil war, the method which dealt directly 
through Slavery the paralytic stroke would not demand, 
any more than a naval expedition, a certainty, but merely 
a probability, of success. 

Amongst all the rights which have been claimed for 
Slavery, as guaranteed in the Constitution, there is one 



68 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

which no man has ever been bold enough to try and make 
out ; that is, the right of existence. Slavery has the right 
to the rendition of fugitives, — so long as it exists ; the 
right of representation, — so long as it exists; but no- 
where the right to exist. Our fathers did not expect it to 
continue in existence, and made no arrangement to secure 
it should that existence be threatened. 

Its right to be let alone in the States where it exists is 
simply a negative right, held " during life or good behav- 
iour " ; and our fathers were not such knaves as to guarantee 
its life, nor such fools as to guarantee its good behaviour. 

Leaving out of the account any demand of military 
necessity that every slave's chain should be struck off 
by a decree of emancipation, it is important to bear in 
mind that our President has no oath registered to protect 
Slavery. The counterpart of the right of Slavery to be let 
alone in the States where it confines itself is the forfeit- 
ure of any claim to protection from any influence in Na- 
ture or Civilization which may threaten its existence. If 
by lifting his finger the President could save Slavery from 
death, he would have no right to lift his little finger; it 
would be as unconstitutional to save it in any State, as it 
would be, under the usual and peaceful process of govern- 
ment, to destroy it in any State by an official act. 

In the present conflict. Slavery has cast itself directly 
across the track where the President has sworn to engineer 
the government, and he has no right even to put down the 
brakes to save it from being cut in two. He has stretched 
his constitutional authority to the utmost in having 
sounded the whistle to warn it, as he did recently in his 
special message. 

Let it be remembered that the right of the States to 
regulate their own domestic institutions is one growing 



IN COMMON LAW 69 

out of the nature of the government which our Constitu- 
tion established. But the friends of Slavery have of late 
years been pressing this feature of our government so far 
as to break it, — carrying it so far that the national gov- 
ernment was represented as something which liad a use, 
but, having created various sovereign States, was now 
only fit to be thrown away, like a pod from which the 
peas have been gathered. To put the case beyond the 
reach of prejudice, let us imagine a case which cannot oc- 
cur, but which is parallel : Cotton is a staple which any 
State has a right to produce. But suppose some year all 
the cotton planted should bear a fatally poisonous flower, 
which should be woven into garments deadly to the wear- 
ers. Suppose that it was determined that, owing to some 
new atmospheric conditions, the cotton-plant if grown 
must continue a fatal poison. Then if any State should 
persist in raising and selling that staple, the United States 
would be compelled to interfere to prevent it. No specific 
power would be necessary for such interference ; for such 
a State would be an outlaw with which any nation (a for- 
tiori that to which it owed allegiance) would have a right 
to interfere. Now, Slavery having always spread malaria 
throughout the nation, has this year actually borne a 
poisonous harvest, — which, uninterfered with, must prove 
fatal to republican government. Then the general govern- 
ment has a right to deal with it no longer as a domestic 
institution, but as a public foe. 'T is its duty, even in the 
Border States, where the crop comes on later, to arrest 
the institution before it has reached the fatal maturity of 
treason there also. Already we have heard Garrett Davis 
advise Kentucky to resist laws of the United States. 

The question whether Slavery is a national or a State 
institution is this year a sheer impertinence. I have ob- 



70 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

served that, when Slavery wants new territory or a fugi- 
tive negro, it is always a national institution; when it 
wants discussion throttled, or, in the pathetic words of 
Jeff., " to be let alone," it is always a State institution. 
According to the States-Rights interpretation, our fathers 
put it together in the hasty way in which the marvellous 
dog spoken of in the advertisements of Spalding's glue 
was put together. The dog, being cut in two, was in- 
stantly made whole by this wonderful preparation ; but 
so hastily were the parts put together, that the hind-legs 
and fore-legs projected in opposite directions. So the dog 
went through the remainder of his life running on his 
fore-legs until he got tired, then turning a somersault and 
running on his hind-legs. Slavery, having gone, as its ad- 
vantages suggested, now on national, now on State legs, 
has at length thrown itself across the nation's track, and, 
if the train comes in " on time," will be cut in two once 
more ; and, though our Border-State friends are already 
offering in advance Spalding's genuine, dog-cheap, let us 
hope that this dog has had his day. 

In all the States which have seceded, the gate of liber- 
ation has been opened by purblind oppression's own hand. 
If, as this government declares. Slavery is a State insti- 
tution, it must, in the eyes of this government, fall when 
the State government falls. A number of "the weaker 
brethren" in Congress have raised a cry that this position 
concedes what the rebels claim, that a State can be wrested 
from the Union ; and Mr. Montgomery Blair has given a 
blatant assent to that cry. I will not say that these ,men 
thus prove themselves unfit to legislate for a nation whose 
institutions they thus estimate ; but if the following state- 
ments shall lead any mind to that inference, I shall not 
complain of being misunderstood. 



IN COMMON LAW 71 

Where is the court or power in any seceded State which 
this government can recognize ? Suppose the Governor of 
any seceded State should claim from Governor Andrew 
of Massachusetts the return of a criminal to that State. 
Would the Governor, who is bound to return persons 
accused of crime to the States in which the crimes were 
committed, return a criminal to Governor Pickens ? 

Suppose even a loyal Carolinian to claim a negro within 
our lines at Port Royal, in what court is the case to be 
decided ? There is no court, large or small, in that State, 
which could be recognized without surrendering the whole 
case of the United States. Even if the United States had 
a Commissioner there for the purpose, he cannot even try 
the case except the claimant bring a certificate of owner- 
ship from a loyal court in that State ; but where will such 
a court be found ? 

This principle would be at once seen if it referred to 
white-faced minors and apprentices. If a few thousand of 
these should desert the South for our lines, and the par- 
ents and 'prentice-masters, loyal or rebel, should seek to 
have them returned, as "owing service" under the laws 
of their States, would our government treat such State 
codes as still in existence ? Would this government return 
a few regiments of youths under age, who wished to fight 
for us, to their parents ? Is it not anxious to draw away 
from rebel lines all of these it can ? 

It does not follow that the State, as a member of this 
government, has committed suicide, but only that all it 
has, by its own separate authority, established is laid in 
ruins. The blow aimed by States' Rights at the authority 
of the nation strikes to the heart of those very Rights, 
and those alone ; for the crime places the State before the 
supreme government in the attitude of a criminal, whose 



72 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

allegiance is still perfect, but whose rights are exactly 
what the supreme tribunal decides them to be. 

No State can affect so much of its existence as is derived 
from, and dependent upon, acts of the general government. 
It can destroy its own courts, but not its United States 
District Court. 

The United States is engaged in an unjustifiable war, 
if judged by any other theory than that the seceded States 
are in a state of anarchy ; and anarchy is emancipation, 
because Slavery rests upon certain special (exclusively) 
State enactments, which being now withdrawn, it falls to 
the ground. If not, let some one show us why, of all pecul- 
iar and domestic institutions, — such as the laws punish- 
ing as criminals anti-slavery men, and also those who teach 
negroes to read or write, — slave-ownership alone has an 
ark in which to survive the deluge. If this war is a real 
thing with us, our government is engaged in establishing 
laws and their forms in places where all laws have been 
overthrown, with all the rights and wrongs held under 
them : universal law it may establish there, but not local 
law ; and if Slavery exists any more in such localities, it 
will be by an act of this government, as purely arbi- 
trary and infamous as if it imported so many slaves from 
Africa. 

For the United States occupying Virginia to establish 
there the local laws and institutions which had existed 
in that State, any more than those of New York is ultra 
vires. The United States not only has no such authority, 
but in the present case to recognize the relation of master 
and slave in the South is simply to follow in the fearful 
furrows of civil war, and sow them with the winds whose 
harvests shall be whirlwinds such as we are to-day reaping. 

To all the technical objections offered to this position, 



IN COMMON LAW 73 

— based on the idea of Centralization, the twin error with- 
State sovereignty, — which hold that a State cannot 
violate its compact with the general government, the law 
replies with its maxim, Viajacti, via juris. 

But however important these views may be, the argu- 
ment for Emancipation need not rest upon them : indeed, 
so systematically have the negroes been kept from the 
means of knowing their rights, that their liberty must 
rise upon them, clear and unmistakable, like a sunrise. 

We need, then, an edict without reservation declaring 
that this government recognizes all men in this country 
as free. This edict may come from two sources : — 

I. Congress may declare Slavery abolished 
1. By the power (Art. I, § 8) to provide for the com- 
mon defence and general welfare. 2. By the duty (Art. 
IV, § 4) assigned the government, to guarantee to every 
State in this Union a republican form of government. 
When Congress has the manliness to see, what it requires 
ingenuity not to see, that the common defence is weakened 
and the general welfare impaired by the existence of Sla- 
very in this country, it is under oath to abolish that system, 
under the first of these clauses. When it has the common 
sense to see that Slavery and the rebellion are united 
as cause and effect, and recognizes the normal hostility 
of Slavery towards the ballot-box, — i. e. to the repub- 
lican form of government it is pledged to maintain in 
every State, — it is sworn no longer to harbor it in the 
country. 

It is not to the point to say that the majority of the 
States which adopted the Constitution held slaves. Law 
is, essentially, the higher nature of man enthroned over 
his lower. Criminals are every day punished by laws which 



74 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

they pay to sustain, and acknowledge to be just and au- 
thentic. Many slaveholders voted for the principle that 
" all men are created equal." This question is to be con- 
sidered apart from the practice of the States and individ- 
uals who made our Constitution, as much as apart from 
their religious persuasions. 

The compromise which our fathers made with Slavery 
was not the one-sided affair which some new schools would 
have us believe. They gave protection to the system as 
long as it should last ; but, on the other part, they gained 
the power over it which such protection implies. The abo- 
lition of Slavery by Congress requires no amendment of 
the Constitution, simply because there is no word in the 
compact securing that institution from the natural effect 
of legislation for the general welfare. Consequently, its 
extinction is committed to the growth of opinion, and may 
be reached at any moment when the judgment of Congress 
shall enact that henceforth the clauses relating to " persons 
held to service " shall be held as applicable only to minors 
and apprentices. 

The fact that these clauses, when adopted, were meant 
to protect Slavery, along with the liability of minors and 
apprentices, is balanced by the fact that its specific men- 
tion was left out for the very purpose of rendering its 
tenure insecure. 

But the strictest constructionist, or the most sensitive 
traditionalist, will admit at once that the Slavery-institu- 
tion to which our fathers gave a quasi-protection in the 
Constitution is quite a different thing from the Slavery- 
institution which it is now proposed to abolish. Slavery 
establishing the ballot-box over its own head is a different 
thing from Slavery trampling on the ballot-box. Slavery 
helping to rear a republican government is a different 



IN COMMON LAW 75 

institution from that which comes with murderous weapon 
to strike it out of existence. 

The truth is, it is a doomed institution. Our fathers 
pronounced sentence on it, giving it the benefit of clergy, 
whereof it has availed itself to the last stretch of grace. 
The day and deed of execution they assigned to their pos- 
terity. From us it may get a reprieve; but a pardon, 
never ! 

II. The President of the, United States, as Commander- 
in-Chief of our Army and Navy, may abolish Slavery 
under Martial Law. 

This is a purely military power, and consequently Con- 
gress cannot, under the war power, abolish Slavery. Con- 
gress, may, however, impeach the President, if, to the 
detriment of the Republic, he should refuse to do this. 

The war power being legitimated by the Constitution, 
its edicts are constitutional law until repealed by due pro- 
cess of legislation, remaining in force after the exigency 
which evoked them is past. The slaves of rebels in the 
department lately under J. C. Fremont are legally, as 
under martial law he declared them, free men ; and should 
any one of them sue for liberty, he could only be surren- 
dered to his master by a decision that the President's 
modification of Mr. Fremont's proclamation was a mil- 
itary order of reenslavement, superseding ordinary process 
of law. 

They are either free men or the President has, for 
military reasons, sent them to the dungeon of Slavery, as 
he has sent political prisoners to Fort Warren. 

It is an error to suppose that, if the slaves were de- 
clared free by the Commander-in-Chief, the effect of such 
proclamation would pass away when the rebellion was 



76 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

suppressed. The President might, during the war, and 
under the power which had emancipated them, reenslave 
them, — holding himself ready, in both cases, to show the 
military reasons for his action. He is supposed to act by 
necessity. But except by such military necessity and 
power, he could not revoke his proclamation. It would be 
law until unmade by Congress. 

Equally is it an error to suppose that any State would 
be able, after the liberation of slaves by the United States, 
to reenslave them. 

Whilst the government recognizes as slaves those who 
are so by birth and by fact, yet for a State to enslave a 
man whom even its own laws have pronounced free would 
be contrary to the article of the Constitution which se- 
cures every " person " from being arbitrarily deprived of 
life, liberty, or property ; but that slaves liberated by the 
laws of the United States could not be made slaves by any 
State is manifest from Art. VI of the Constitution, which 
declares : " This Constitution, and the laws of the United 
States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all 
treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority 
of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land ; 
and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any- 
thing in the Constitution or laws of any State to the con- 
trary notwithstanding." 

IV 

MILITARY NECESSITY 

It is claimed that the military general is the judge of 
what military necessity requires. 

The military general is the judge of the methods by 
which certain movements are to be accomplished. It is 



MILITARY NECESSITY 77 

manifest, however, that specific movements and methods 
are, to a great extent, determined by the great object to 
be accomplished by the entire system of movements. 
General McClellan is the judge of how to reach Rich- 
mond ; but of the object we have in reaching Richmond 
he is not at all the judge. The nation must assign the aim, 
and then its officers must decide what means are necessary 
to that aim. It is clear that, if the demand of the nation 
were simply that our flag should wave over some forts and 
custom-houses from which it has been taken down, the 
military necessities involved would be very different from 
what they would be if the demand were that this rebellion 
should be crushed in such a way as that it should be ab- 
solutely impossible ever to have another. 

The war power is not limited to a specific military 
movement, but extends to any aim which the people may 
hold as essential to the stability, peace, and honour of their 
country. 

The war power — the power unsealed by military ne- 
cessity — is not dependent in its action upon the absolute 
indispensableness of the measures it proposes. It is justi- 
fied in that it secures any advantage greater than the price 
paid. If a conflagration were sweeping through a city, and 
there were a probability that the blowing up of John Doe's 
house would arrest it, John Doe's lawful " castle " would 
be blown up. J. D. might give good reasons to show that 
the flames would presently be arrested without that mea- 
sure ; but if it were probable that two houses might be 
saved by destroying this one, it would be done. In such 
emergencies the scale of values rules. The cow-shed must 
be sacrificed for the cabin, the cabin for the mansion, the 
mansion for two mansions. 

Thus no advantage could be so small but it would, by 



78 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

martial law, justify the destruction of Slavery. If by abol- 
ishing the unmitigated curse of this land the life of one 
soldier could be saved, we should be the murderers of that 
soldier if we did not abolish it. If by slaying this pursu- 
ing demon we could bring peace to the country ten minutes 
sooner than without it, we should be traitors to civiliza- 
tion if we did not do it. For the one soldier's life, the ten 
minutes' additional peace, would be worth something ; the 
infernal thing we should pay for these must be reckoned 
worth less than nothing. 

In war Slavery is the strength of the South, — The 
institution of Slavery, which in time of peace is a weak- 
ness of the South, is in time of war, and untouched by us, 
strong enough to equal the numbers and means of the 
North. It has not yet been sufficiently considered that 
war and Slavery naturally consort ; war was the cradle of 
Slavery; the first slaves were war captives. In essence 
Slavery is the imposition of one will on another by physi- 
cal force ; in that alone it differs from spontaneous or free 
labour. And war is but the acute form of the same disease. 
Slavery has been a perpetual training for the camp. 

Every man who leaves the North for the field of battle 
is a labourer, and leaves so much derangement in the usual 
social integrity ; some wheel of the machine stops when he 
goes, and some deprivation ensues ; but in the South the 
war is the vent of idlers, giving aim to lives hitherto aim- 
less. This military life is a step in advance for the South, 
which has already displayed energies of which it had not 
been suspected. The South will not get sick of war so soon 
as the North, it being quite atwin with its Slavery for the 
South to become formally a military country. Whilst the 
training of Freedom has led the North every day farther 
from war, every day of Slavery has accustomed the South 



MILITARY NECESSITY 79 

to it. The North has to go back a hundred years to reach 
the plane of war ; the land of Slavery never was beyond it. 

In war all you have added to the world in a century is 
not only out of place, but in your way ; only the coarsest and 
rudest things avail here, and those who are most at home 
in the coarsest and rudest forces will, in a conflict of mere 
brute force, be apt to win. Now here are four millions of 
slaves working for the South. There being for military 
purposes corn and pork wanted, and not arts and ele- 
gances, all the superiority of intelligent over unintelligent 
labour ceases. The man who can dig a row of corn or feed 
swine is equal to the finest mechanic. And since every 
man who produces a soldier's ration points the soldier at 
us, just as the soldier points his gun at us, these four mil- 
lions of negroes must be counted as our foes, whatever 
their feeling toward us. 

The South is, then, at the start, twelve millions to our 
eighteen. But of our eighteen the women do not work in 
the field, and the children go to school, whereas the black 
women and minors do work in the field, — which, for mili- 
tary force, would make them nearly fifteen millions. Then 
we must estimate production in its relation to consump- 
tion : the black labourer, being fed at less than a third the 
cost of the corresponding Northern labourer, sustains at 
least two more soldiers in the field than the Northerner. 
Thus does the reign of barbarism reverse all the advan- 
tages of free over slave labour. In a conflict of mere brute 
force, Slavery has only to emphasize the old menace, fetter 
and bowie-knife, to which it is accustomed. 

The North has imagined that it could bring the bal- 
ance to its side by its superior wealth ; but it must be 
remembered that those who get without paying for it 
what others have to pay for, are as rich as if they had the 



80 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

wherewithal to pay. Who would wish to be troubled with 
money, if he could get things for a dollar a year spent 
in cowhides? 

In the above estimate, which would make the contend- 
ing parties in this country substantially equal in numeri- 
cal force, it has not been forgotten that it is urged that a 
large portion of the Southern people are Unionists. Al- 
though the evidences of this seem to me slight, it would 
be, if true, of less bearing upon the question than might 
be at first supposed. For, no matter what a man's sympa- 
thies may be, he cannot labour in any section but he adds 
to the wealth of that section, and to its military stores and 
strength. 



THE TWO EDGES OF THE SWORD 

The sword has two edges ; one is turned toward the user, 
and never fails to give him a wound for each inflicted on 
his antagonist. 

What does the settlement of this conquest by mere 
military force imply to the Free States? They say that 
our army is not thorough in its morale; which means, 
that the young man who was graduated last year is yet 
too full of culture and civilization to butcher his fellow 
beings after the most approved Texan style. He has not 
forgotten that his mother and his pastor taught him to 
overcome evil with good. The gentleman is still, to a mel- 
ancholy extent, predominant in him, the horse and alli- 
gator sadly deficient. 

This moralization of the soldier is the demoralization of 
the man. War is the apotheosis of brutality. Looking into 
the past, we see it as a climax of horrors when a harlot is 



THE TWO EDGES OF THE SWORD 81 

borne through the streets of Paris, proclaimed the God- 
dess of Reason ; but to-day, should the war end, the masses 
would seize the man whose hand reeked most with human 
blood and bear him on their shoulders to the White 
House. 

Should we continue this war long enough, we shall be- 
come the Vandals and Hessians the South says we are. 

Every great achievement of civilization is in the way of 
war, and must be abridged. Konig of Germany has given 
it as his opinion that distinguished generalship is incon- 
sistent with the existence of the telegraph: in our war, 
both sides are cutting down all telegraph-lines which they 
cannot hold under military censorship. 

The freedom of the press has been proved impossible 
in time of war. 

The trial by jury — the coat of mail which Character 
has worn for ages — is torn away. 

The Habeas Corpus writ — "the high-water mark of 
English liberty " — is of arbitrary application. 

A short time ago we were all uttering our horror of the 
prize-ring, with its brutalities. Now George Wilkes an- 
nounces that our frowning down upon the P. R. has crip- 
pled our military energies as a nation, and that it must 
be restored. Logic seconds his motion. 

Here is Christianity itself, the civilization of religion: 
for its more genial teaching the world gave up the gods of 
battles, Jah and Jove with their thunderbolts. Mars with 
his spear, Odin with his sword. But War bids it recede : 
"You have heard that it hath been said, 'Thou shalt love 
thine enemy,' but I, War, say unto thee, ^Kill thine 
enemy.' " 

Thus one by one these crown-jewels of our Humanity 
must be dimmed or exchanged for paste. 



82 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

"War stands before us to-day a fatal despot, knowing no 
law but the passion of the moment, prostrating the Cen- 
tury before the Hour ; takes the pen and plough from our 
hand, and gives us a sword; melts types into bullets; takes 
away the Golden Rule, and reestablishes the law of an 
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. 

With a new, wild joy all true hearts in this land were 
thrilled when the millions of the North rose up and de- 
clared to Slavery, Here shall thy waves be stayed ! There 
were many reasons for such joy: first, that there was a 
North, when we feared there was none; next, that the 
disease of the country, which we had feared was chronic, 
had assumed an acute form, which is always more hopeful. 
We were glad, because we knew that this war was really 
the most pacific state of things which this country had ever 
known. We knew also that a single day of Slavery and 
its rule in this country witnessed more wrong, violence, 
corruption, more actual war, than all that civil war even 
could bring (which conviction in my own mind, as one 
having lived all my life in the midst of or near that insti- 
tution, I here declare unshaken by any disasters we have 
encountered). 

A gorilla is an admirable animal, looked at prospec- 
tively from the crocodile point of view ; and so when a 
nation which had for years been crawling in the mud 
before an insolent usurper leaped to its feet, and forgot 
in a great moment the wretched prey for which it had 
crawled, it was an hour for paeans only. Every principle 
had been paid down for outward unity, — a unity pre- 
serving both hands, both feet, only to enter with both 
into hell-fire; but now a line was graven on the earth, 
and the nation declared it would perish rather than com- 



THE TWO EDGES OF THE SWORD 83 

promise again. The first grand step was to have the 
nation committed to an uncompromising attitude toward 
this rebellion; to make the determination to overcome it 
at whatever physical cost, irrevocable. 

So much gained, the best method of overcoming the 
rebellion would be arrived at by further reflection and 
discussion. The war, in its proper time and place, was 
noble, because spontaneous and heroic ; but in this age 
and land it could only be an embryonic phase, to pass 
away before higher phases, which under its quick heats 
would speedily be developed. 

Every higher being must, ere it is born from the egg, 
pass through preceding forms. Every crab must be a 
trilobite and a lobster before it is born a crab. Man him- 
self must first resemble the lower beings. As these infe- 
rior shapes have pioneered the way for the higher in the 
earth, so do they now in each individual case. As pioneers 
they are essential ; but if the higher being forthcoming 
shall retain any of these inferior embryonic conditions, 
he is deformed ; as when a man has a hare's lip or ape's 
hand. But every deformity was right in its place; every 
lip is at one period a hare-lip; it is a deformity only 
when retained where a healthy development would have 
gone beyond it. The birth of a nation is not different. 
We have struggled by some phases which allied us to 
lower governments; we must struggle by the war phase. 
The war is but the gorilla phase in our national embryo; 
we must see that it does not linger longer than is needed 
to add its contribution to the national manhood. If, when 
the period of purely human power arrives, the sword 
remains, it were as if claw and fang remained when the 
period of tooth and hand arrived. 

Already there are unmistakable indications that the 



84 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

mere military enthusiasm in this contest is cooling, whilst 
the anxiety concerning the issue is deeper each day than 
the day before. Many of our soldiers who rushed to 
Washington had to be kept there by (what must be re- 
garded) a forced decision of a United States judge; it 
was easily seen that, if one man could claim the limit of 
enlistment, Washington would be left undefended. There 
is no longer any activity in recruiting stations; and, in 
the West, recruiting itinerants are getting up revival 
meetings for the war. The appeals of these officers to the 
crowd resembled those of revivalists imploring the uncon- 
verted to be saved. In the same tones they beseech the 
youth to " close in with the overtures," to enlist before it 
shall be " awfully too late." The crowd usually remains 
still, as the depraved too often do in the revival meetings. 
It is certain that one or two more "Shilohs" will bring a 
draft upon these profoundly impenitent young men. 

In one of these meetings, in Central Ohio, I remember 
a tremendous sensation which was produced by an old 
man, who arose and said that he had three sons, brave as 
anybody's sons, and he was willing to sacrifice them for 
his country ; but he desired to be perfectly sure that they 
were not to be sacrificed to human slavery, or to preserve 
it in the land; he would not sacrifice their nail-parings 
for that, or for the Union with that. 

VI 

FIGHTING THE DEVIL WITH FIRE 

There is nothing that the devil so likes as that his 
antagonists should fight him with fire : the rascal knows 
that none can be so much at home where fire is concerned 
as he. 



FIGHTING THE DEVIL WITH FIRE 85 

The wise Book says, "Be not overcome of evil, hut 
overcome evil with good.'' Every victory of evil over evil 
leaves me as much vanquished as my enemy. Every blow 
that gains me the victory as a brute, loses me the victory 
as a man. My foe may lie dead at my feet; but beside 
him, in the dust I have made him bite, lies my crown of 
Reason, shattered. I could, then, find no wiser way of 
treating him than this. 

To begin on the lowest plane, we may well ask our- 
selves what advantage it will be to us to occupy the 
cities, islands, and beaches of the Southern coast. The 
triple-headed monster of Southern fever will drive us 
away from there. Our government has hitherto occupied 
the Southern forts with Southerners, and even they only 
held them nominally in summer. Now our Southerners 
have left us. If Southerners themselves have to move 
away from their coasts in summer, how long is it likely 
that men who have gone South now for the first time can 
live there? The sanitary committee has shown that we 
have been losing soldiers simply by disease at the rate of 
twenty-six regiments per annum : if we hold the points 
on the Southern coast now occupied by us, it will be at 
thrice that cost. 

Are we to enact the part of Sisyphus and his stone, — 
rolling the stone of conquest southward during one half of 
the year, to have it roll back again during the other half ? 

Again : it is demonstrable that by any merely military 
victory (for that would leave Slavery undestroyed) we 
should be as much conquered as the rebels. 

My friend, Mr. Resist- the-Devil J. Browne, a descend- 
ant of one of the Pilgrims, and now a student at Cam- 
bridge, wrote me some time ago the following account of 
an event in that neighbourhood : — 



86 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

" Lately, our little neighbour, the village of Somerville, 
has been subjected to a terrible ordeal. Fancy the amaze- 
ment of the villagers, on seeing a huge anaconda marching 
leisurely down its main street ! It had, it seems, escaped 
from a circus exhibiting near the village. 

" Now, it is easy to see that a big snake, crawling through 
a small village, is scarcely conducive to the repose of mind 
of those resident therein. It is certain that the quiet of 
Somerville was disturbed ; indeed, the only quiet was in 
the streets, which were speedily deserted, whilst in the 
houses the liveliest commotion existed. Doors and windows 
were barricaded. The snake had all out of doors to him- 
self. At last the village concluded to have a meeting; 
which was held out of various upstairs windows, the 
motions being made across streets. A man was ap- 
pointed chairman on account of his high position in 
society, — he being at the attic window of a four-story 
house, — and presently a motion proceeded from the dor- 
mitory of an adjacent cottage, that the male residents who 
had firearms should take them and go forth to pursue this 
enemy of the commonwealth of Somerville. The motion 
was put to the various windows by the chairman in the 
attic, and carried. The men buckled on their armour and 
went forth. When they got towards the outskirts of the 
village, they saw his royal anacondaship snoozing in a 
fence corner. When the monster saw them, he crawled 
off, and hid himself under a barn. 

"The heroes returned to their homes, flushed with 
victory, — Vefii, vidi, vici^ in every eye ; they had pur- 
sued the foe, and he had fled before them ignominiously, 
the very Floyd of anacondas. 'Unbar your doors, ye 
noble matrons of Somerville,' they cried ; ' the victory 
of your sons is complete.' But one timid lady asked where 



FIGHTING THE DEVIL WITH FIRE 87 

the anaconda was. 'Under Mr. Smith's barn/ was the 
reply. Then this lady inquired modestly, ' But may not a 
snake that is under a barn come out from under a barn ? ' 
* Sure enough ! ' * Sure enough ! ' echoed from window 
after window ; and the lustre of victory was gone. The 
more it was thought of, the more it appeared that the ana- 
conda was even more formidable concealed under the 
barn than in the middle of the street. The young men 
watched around the barn till nightfall ; the snake did not 
budge. They repaired, heavy-hearted, to their homes. 
Alas ! there was little rest in Somerville that night. All 
were sure they heard the snake trying their window- 
panes ; each was sure it was lying over the roof of his or 
her house. The morning came on aching eyes. None wished 
to go out of the door, sure that the snake was waiting to 
drop straight down from roof or tree on their heads. 

" Day succeeded day, and that snake, snugly disposed 
under the barn, kept the whole village vanquished. People 
began to desert Somerville, expiring leases in that fated 
village were not renewed. Somerville began to lose its 
reputation as a desirable place of residence. Eeal estate 
began to suffer. People went not through, but around 
that village ; cars did not stop at its ticket-office. The 
students at Cambridge used to take morning walks toward 
Somerville ; now their walks were in a precisely opposite 
direction. In short, there was a prospect that the whole 
population would soon have to be taken into the Lunatic 
Asylum of that devoted village. 

" At this juncture, a gentleman returned from a journey 
to his home there, and, hearing the trouble, killed a pig 
and placed it a rod from the barn ; then he took his 
gun and got on top of the barn. With the ancient in- 
stinct of such devils to rush into swine, the snake soon 



88 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

made for the slaughtered animal. Then this man hilled 
the snake. 

" It is said that the circus-manager rushed up and began 
an argument to show that it was a constitutional ana- 
conda ; but the man declared that his gun was also consti- 
tutionally a gun, and fired away. 

" Who the man that killed the snake was, I have not yet 
learned : I have discovered, however, that he is not a mem- 
ber of the present Administration." 

Does a purely military victory contemplate, or can it 
effect, anything beyond driving the snake under the barn? 
" But," one may say, " having got it under a barn, we can 
keep it there." Certainly : and if that is what life is given 
for, — to sit beside barns, watching snakes, — then it is 
all right ; but if any member of the National Barn Guard, 
or of the 500th regiment of Snake-watchers of the future, 
should consider "the situation" in the light of certain 
work he may have been in the habit of accomplishing, he 
may conclude that the snake is holding him as much as he 
holds the snake. 

When America has to swerve from the orbit of her des- 
tiny to stand guarding eight hundred thousand square 
miles of her territory from the ravages of rebellion ; when 
she has to hold her Union by military force ; when for this 
end our children must be turned aside from the noble aims 
fostered by free institutions and the arts of peace, drafted 
to swell and preserve the vast standing army which such 
a state of things would require, — then America, degraded 
into a military nation, would be overcome of evil. Her 
victory would fetter most of all her own limbs. 

Even trade could not stand such a condition. The 
Northwest needs the Mississippi River, but it does not wish 



LIBERTY'S LEGITIMATE WEAPON 89 

to sit forever, five hundred thousand strong, on the banks 
of that stream, to see that it does n't flow away again into 
a foreign land. Trade can use the river only by being 
able to leave it, and go home and trade in full faith that 
this river will remain loyal. 

It is this vanquished victory alone which the sword can 
by any possibility win for us. 

Has the sword ever done any but a partial and patched 
work? In our American Revolution against England, war 
was declared as justly and prosecuted as successfully as 
ever before or since in the history of the world ; but our 
difficulties to-day prove that the sword did not do the work 
then assigned it cleanly. The sword had conquered victory 
and a forced peace ; but then it had to hold them ; in gain- 
ing colonial independence thus it had made a giant foe, 
who, it knew, would make other attempts at subjugation. 
So the Colonies, in order to combine against any possible 
attack from a foreign usurper, must surrender to an in- 
ternal usurper. The Union was formed for the common 
defence ; it was more a military than a civil measure. It 
had to be made at once. The rights of man were compro- 
mised for the emergency ; for all the States must combine, 
whatever seeds of future disunion they might bring with 
them. We see to-day that this over-swift formation which 
the revolutionary method, adopted by our fathers, com- 
pelled, illustrates once more the infallible law that they 
who take to the sword shall perish by the sword. 

VII 

liberty's legitimate weapon 

A panther can slay seven men, if in the encounter the 
men have only the weapons of the panther : tooth to tooth, 



90 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

claw to claw, the men are inferior. But let one man en- 
counter tlie panther, armed with his superiority to the 
panther, — let him bear in his hand his chemistry and 
art, in the firearm which the panther cannot invent or use, 
and he can slay the panther. 

Slavery having challenged Liberty, Liberty has been 
unwise enough to select Slavery's own weapons. But with 
these weapons Liberty's apparent victories will be defeats ; 
for though the panther be driven into its den, to hold it 
there would be the subversion of this government, i. e. its 
change into a government of military force. But let her 
be armed with her superiority to Slavery, and she is 
irresistible. 

The only legitimate weapon of Liberty is — Liberty, 
It is doubtful if the nation at large will be able to see 
how a bold, unconditional decree of emancipation would 
speedily and thoroughly suppress this rebellion. God al- 
ways allows some margin for human magnanimity. If this 
nation saw success in such a measure, it would enact it ; 
so would any herd of cattle. Room is allowed man for 
the play of motives higher than policy ; his highest success 
comes only when he seelis first the kingdom of justice, and 
then finds that all other advantages are added thereunto. 
"Honesty," says Whately, "is indeed the best policy; 
but no honest man ever acted on that principle." Indeed, 
it takes an honest man to find out such policy ; those see 
clearly how emancipation would end the war forever, who 
would emancipate in any case, because it is right. Yet 
probabilities can be shown in the direction of our method, 
which are far stronger than any indicating that war can 
win us even a military victory over the rebellion ; proba- 
bilities more numerous and sufficient than those on which 
human beings act in a majority of cases. 



LIBERTY'S LEGITIMATE WEAPON 91 

There is a point m the South by touching which the 
entire military power of the South is paralyzed. Nat 
Turner touched that point, and with fifty negroes behind 
him held the entire State of Virginia as if stricken by 
catalepsy for five weeks. John Brown touched it, and with 
twenty-one men so held Virginia that, had he had a fourth 
of McClellan's army, he could in one month have occupied 
the entire State. It became a proverb, that John Brown 
had demonstrated the weakness of Slavery. This huge 
machinery of armies and numbers is a barbarism ; it is as 
if we built great Roman aqueducts, ignoring the modern 
discovery of the water-level, which makes a hydrant in 
one's yard answer the same purpose, or a better. It is a 
rudeness far behind our civilization to think that numbers 
can conquer for us : numbers are as weak as they are 
strong. We are beyond that in our municipal governments. 
It is estimated that twenty policemen can conquer and 
disperse the largest riot or tumult that could occur in New 
York. Why? Because each policemen has the moral power 
of the nation at his back, whilst the rioters are mere bits 
of chaos. We do not have to set one half of a city to keep 
the other half in order. I have seen a half-dozen burly 
ruffians led to prison by a man weaker than either of 
them, but who had an idea symboled in the star on his 
breast, whilst the ruffians had none. When our country 
has an idea in this war, it need only send South a moder- 
ate police force. Nat Turner and John Brown, with stars 
out of heaven on their breasts, holding commissions from 
Almighty God to put down the organic disorder in the 
South, proved that Slavery cannot stir but as Freedom 
permits it ; but McClellan, with seven hundred thousand 
men under him for six months, proved that men unarmed 
with ideas are as unable to cope with the kindled ferocity 



k 



92 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

of wrong as they are without guns to cope with half their 
number of tigers. In a fearful sense our men are yet 
unarmed. 

It is a common phrase with many of those who evi- 
dently think that the Union would be nothing without 
Slavery, that an edict of emancipation would not reach or 
free a single slave, and, to use a favourite phrase with cer- 
tain journals, " would not be worth the paper upon which 
it should be written." I observe, however, that these al- 
ways end their arguments by saying. For God's sake, do 
not try it ! It is quite remarkable how nervous they are 
lest an edict should be put forth which could have no 
effect whatever. 

Have we considered well what would be the practical 
bearing if our government should declare every slave free? 
Slavery would by this stroke of the pen be exposed to the 
anti-slavery feeling of the world. If John Brown had a 
successor, he would march South under protection of the 
flag under which the old captain was hung. White and 
black crusaders would rise in Canada, Kansas, Ohio, 
Hayti, New England, following new hermit-leaders to res- 
cue the holy places of humanity. Hayti would no longer 
need beg labourers to come to her shores, and pay them for 
coming: she need only send her ships to cruise near the 
inlets and creeks of the Southern coast, and pick them up 
as they should escape. 

It is not to the point, observe, to say that such an edict 
would not at once free the slaves practically ; it would 
practically do a better thing, — it would recall to his 
homey where he ought to he, every soldier now in his arms 
against the United States, It is manifest that the South 
would not be able to resist the anti-slavery crusade of the 
world, guarding its slaves from escape, and at the same 



LIBERTY'S LEGITIMATE WEAPON 93 

time leave its homes to assassinate the liberties of the 
United States. All that a Southerner hath will he give 
for his slave ; and to that cord drawing him home would 
be added that panic which a whisper of insurrection can 
raise in that section to such an extent that it drives all 
before it. In a single month there would be a distribution 
of all the forces of the Confederacy into various Home 
Guards. 

Perhaps I am more impressed with the conviction of the 
immeditate potency of emancipation than persons reared 
in the North. I have seen the pallor which a whisper can 
bring upon the cheeks of hundreds. I know that a casual 
rumour has again and again deprived whole towns of a 
week's sleep. Negro insurrection is the name for every 
horror, simply because it is one of which the Southerners 
know nothing. It is doubtful whether, in all the insurrec- 
tions in the South for a hundred years put together, five 
hundred slaves have been in actual insubordination. The 
present generation has seen nothing of the kind. That is 
the very reason why there is such a horror and panic 
about it : it is a vague, mysterious, and unknown evil. As 
far as the shudder about "covering the South with the 
horrors of insurrection " is real, and not a traitorous pre- 
tence, it may be met by the fact that the history of insur- 
rection throughout the world shows that in every case the 
barbarity was chiefly on the part of the whites, and always 
provoked by them. In every case, twenty blacks have been 
butchered to one white. Of all the races now on earth, 
there is none so little cruel, so little bloodthirsty, as the 
negro ; that being why it has been for so many ages the 
enslaved race. The only dread we could have in an im- 
mediate emancipation of this race is that the Confederate 
forces would rush home to massacre their negroes. Doubt- 



94 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

less they would ask the United States for a few months' 
truce for that purpose ; and as the family of fools is yet 
quite large and respectable, and most of them have man- 
aged to become generals in our army, there would be dan- 
ger that our courteous McClellans, Hallecks, etc., would 
be "quiet" until the massacre should take place. But 
when we are up to such a master-stroke of justice, we 
shall be up to stripping the epaulets from negro-hounds 
and placing them on the shoulders of men. We should 
recognize in that call for a truce, which would surely come, 
God's invitation for us to march into the South the pro- 
tectors of black and white, — an army of saviours, not of 
destroyers, — our glorious task to see that the transition 
pangs of the South were safely passed, and her people 
born into light and liberty. 

Let none doubt that the slave is ready to stir in a way 
which will paralyze the armies of the South as soon as he 
hears the true voice. I once asked a slave why it was that 
he and others did not escape: he replied, "Because, after 
getting out of the slsLve-holding States, we must either 
drive under or fly over all the slsiYe-hating States from 
here to Canada." Let Canada be carried wherever our 
flag goes ; nay, let every slave be empowered and author- 
ized to make the spot on which he stands Canada. 

The South has not a misgiving that her slaves are not 
generally asleep to these issues. I have heard of a South- 
erner who, having a Northern visitor before whom he was 
showing off slavery in clean linen, finally alleged that his 
slaves were so happy that nothing could induce them to 
accept their freedom. To make the experiment perfect, he, 
in the presence of the Northern man, offered them their 
freedom if they desired to leave him. £Jvery one of them 
said he loould accept freedom. Whereupon the master 



LIBERTY'S LEGITIMATE WEAPON 95 

swore at them as fools who did not know what was good 
for them, ordered them to their work, and in future exhi- 
bitions before Yankees never attempted the manumission 
trick. Fortunately for him, the Yankee had already taken 
South-side views of the institution. 

When John C. Fremont was a candidate for the Presi- 
dency there was no portion of the South where the watch- 
word "Freedom and Fremont" was not heard at mid- 
night. The South was on the verge of panic. Lately, when 
that same man was in the Western Department, that cry 
from the slaves was echoed from plantation to plantation 
all along the Mississippi, Tennessee, and Red rivers ; and 
so frequent was it at last, that the apprehension reached 
the semi-loyal of the Tennessee and Kentucky border, who 
acted up through all the shades of disloyalty and loyalty, 
until the panic of rebels was felt at the Capitol, and re- 
moved the Warrior of Liberty from his command. 

By that removal, and by the infamous proclamations 
and wanton renditions by which our officers have humili- 
ated us even more than by their wretched incompetency, 
we have doubtless alienated these negroes from us. So 
that our task, at first easy, is now difficult. But it is cer- 
tain that we need only let the slaves along the border 
know our good faith, to have the tidings flash through the 
South all along the lines of nature's telegraph; the way 
to do this is to free the slaves of the Border States 
immediately. 

When I first came North, I used to maintain stoutly, 
with my companions, that the slaves did not desire free- 
dom. More than twenty years had I lived amongst those 
dumb creatures, never dreaming that any one of them had 
a thought of freedom. But when I returned South I found 
that they not only knew, what few whites knew, that I was 



96 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

anti-slavery, but they were eager to consult me as to how 
they might escape. All this took me by surprise; I had 
never hinted freedom to one of them, and it was in one of 
the obscurest parts of Virginia, where Northerners never 
came ; then I saw, for the first time, that the whole social 
system of the South is undermined. 

The South does not as yet fully comprehend her own 
weakness. But she knows that every warrior has his vul- 
nerable heel. Our only danger is that, before our slow 
Northmen are ready to act, the South will suspect this her 
danger, and will cover it up with a decree of emancipa- 
tion for all able-bodied men who will bear arms for the 
Confederacy. That would free nearly five hundred thou- 
sand negro men, which would be a cheap price to pay for 
a victory over the North, which would give them power to 
recover the emancipated half million by reopening the 
slave-trade, and would not impair Slavery at all. (For I 
do not believe the South would give up Slavery for any- 
thing!) The children, by the codes of all slave states, fol- 
low the condition of the mother, and such a decree would 
manumit no women. 

No bid that we could then make for these negroes would 
bring them to our side ; for they would then be under 
military rule, and animated by the spirit of the contest. 
The power that is nearest is that which they have most 
faith in ; a distant, less imposing power might double the 
offer with no effect. 

There is one man in the South who has his eye steadily 
on the watch in this direction. Jefferson Davis has no 
faith whatever in the fondness of the negro for his con- 
dition. 

A few years ago an artist of Philadelphia was engaged 
by the State of South Carolina to prepare some national 



THE GRADUAL PLAN 97 

emblematic picture for her State House. Jefferson Davis 
was requested to act with the South Carolina committee 
in criticising the studies for this design. The first sketch 
brought in by the artist was a design representing the 
North by various mechanic implements, the West by some- 
thing else, whilst the South was represented by various 
things, the centrepiece, however, being a cotton-bale with 
a negro upon it, fast asleep. When Jeff saw it he said, 
" Gentlemen, this will never do ; what will become of the 
South when that negro wakes up?'' 

The first blast from the trump of universal Freedom 
will reveal to Jeff and his Confederates that the negro has 
already waked up; also, which is more important, that 
the North is waked up ; then will our army go marching 
on to bloodless victory, — trampling scourges, not men, 
breaking fetters, not hearts. 

Ah, what tongue can celebrate a victory so glorious ; a 
victory which would restore to our firesides the lost links 
of their circles ; which would touch the blighted lands of 
the South as by a magic wand, until its desert should 
rejoice and blossom as the rose; which should clasp 
the broken arch between North and South with the in- 
frangible keystone, eternal Justice ! 

VIII 

THE GRADUAL PLAN 

A Bohemian story relates that Horace Greeley was 
lately travelling on a steamer, when a High-Church Episco- 
palian minister, who was on board, became much exercised 
concerning his (Greeley's ) soul. At length this clergyman 
approached H. G., and, in a solemn voice, said, " Friend, 
may I inquire if you have ever been baptized ? " "Well, 



98 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

no," replied Greeley, "not exactly; but I've been vaccin- 
ated." 

Gradual emancipation has about as mucb to do with 
putting down this rebellion through Slavery as vaccination 
has with baptism. 

The war power alone gives the President the right even 
to touch Slavery in the States with his little finger, as he 
has done ; and the military advantage which he sees and 
assigns as a reason for his late proposition to cooperate 
in emancipation with slave States is sufficient to justify 
abolition by the war power. 

It is thus one of the commander-in-chief's guns ; and 
to make it gradual would be like firing off a gun a little 
at a time, if that were possible. 

So far as emancipation will help us to crush this rebel- 
lion, no gradual plan which was ever conceived and tried 
can do us the least good. Any measure which leaves the 
slave bound at all to his Southern master, keeps him 
there adding to the wealth and support and military power 
of the hostile section. And if four millions of these labour- 
ers remain to furnish these supplies to the enemy, the 
South will be able to keep in the field all their white popu- 
lation, and whatever advantages we may gain, their rebel- 
lion will survive the youngest person in this nation. 

But looking at the matter apart from the national 
emergency, and simply as a question of political economy, 
to say that gradual emancipation is better for all is to 
throw away all the light of experience in this matter. 
Negro slaves have within this century been emancipated 
in seven or eight countries. And if there is one thing in 
which all reports agree, it is that wherever the thing was 
done in any half way, the country suffered in exports and 
imports ; wherever it was done cleanly, immediately, and 



THE GRADUAL PLAN 99 

unconditionally, the country never failed to reap a full and 
immediate reward. Whilst the island of Jamaica, under 
the gradual plan, groaned under its losses, the adjacent 
islands which made a clean sweep of Slavery saw their 
five talents at once swell to ten. Russia is now undergoing 
the same experience with its serfs, who, kept in limbo be- 
tween Slavery and Liberty, have proved such a burden 
that the taskmasters are crying out to the Czar to have 
them given equal rights or none at all. 

Homer nodding, I allude to the Rev. Homer Wilbur, 
of the " Atlantic Monthly." Many a noble refrain of free- 
dom, which lingers in our hearts in the watches of the 
night, which greets the rising day, must be traced to this 
Homer ; but lately it would seem that his Muse threatens 
to reverse the story of Undine, and gradually lose her 
soul. What else can be said concerning his PoUiwog 
fable? This fable compares those who would declare 
Slavery at an end, so far as this government is concerned, 
to those philotadpoles who, impatient at the slow growth 
by which Nature leads poUiwog to frog, insisted on cutting 
oft' the tails of the former. After this Homer writes : " I 
would do nothing hastily or vindictively, nor presume to 
jog the elbow of Providence. No desperate measures for 
me till we are sure that all others are hopeless, — flectere 
si nequeo superos, Acheronta moveho,^^ 

In other words, the slaughter at Manassas, Ball's BlufP, 
Winchester, Shiloh are mild measures ; these are appeals 
to the gods ; but to release millions from dungeons, fetters, 
auction blocks, and raise them to life, this is a "desperate 
measure," this is to " move hell " ! 

Is it possible that any cataract should have been so far 
formed over this once clear eye that it now sees a state 
of Slavery to be a normal phase in the condition of human 



100 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

beings ? O Homer, once you sang as if you saw that Slav- 
ery, and not emancipation, was the murderous lopping off 
of the poor poUiwog's tail ! 
So far as the principle, 

From lower to the higher next, 
Not to the top, is Nature's text, 

is concerned, it is certainly true. Only, to apply it in the 
present case as against immediate emancipation gives an 
odd suggestion of a Sleepy Hollow somewhere near Cam- 
bridge. Does Homer remember nothing of the long and 
fearful years in which we have gone — God knows how 
wearily and slowly — from step to step up to this our 
Commencement Day ? To speak of emancipation now as 
hasty, or a leap over essential steps, is as if Homer should 
go to the next Senior who, having made his graduation 
speech at the end of a full College course, is about to re- 
ceive his diploma, and say : " My dear young man,yes^ma 
lente ! You must n't think of a diploma until you have 
been here four years yet. Come over, — our Ollendorf 
class meets at ten now." 

Or here, say, is an old tree which has been slowly rot- 
ting, until a breath only may bring it to the earth ; now, 
merely because it falls with a crash, and the splinters fly, 
shall we accuse the blithe breeze which did the work of 
being a revolutionary tornado, moving Acheron ? 

Let us trust that Providence will " presume to jog the 
elbow " of Homer, that he may no longer nod whilst the 
first page in God's account with America is closing, and 
when it is plain that upon the virtue and earnestness of 
the current hour it must depend whether there shall be 
any balance in favour of this nation to be carried to the 
fresh page, or to entitle it to further trust. 



WAR FOR THE UNION 101 

IX 

WAR FOR THE UNION 

We are told, with a frequency and vehemence which so 
simple a proposition could scarcely be supposed to evoke, 
that " this is a war for the Union." We can account for 
the vehemence by the supposition that this sentence has 
a reverse side, which is, that " this is not a war for eman- 
cipation." 

We do not need a war for emancipation. Slavery is 
the creature of positive law ; it is maintainable only by 
systematic force. Only withdraw the positive supports of 
Slavery, — only let the government declare that it will 
henceforth ignore the relation of master and slave, — and 
Slavery falls by its own weight. 

But has not this idea of a " war for the Union " its 
comic side ? I once knew of a father's whipping his child 
because the child did not love him so well as it did its 
nurse, and it seemed to me an odd way to cultivate filial 
affection ; but is it not so that we are recovering unity 
with the South ? If that Union had not been already dead, 
surely we have sent artillery enough down there to have 
killed it several times. Whether we shall succeed with our 
arms or not, it would be a corpse that we conquered, gal- 
vanize it as we might. My theory of General McClellan 
is that he has just sense enough to see that, the object 
assigned being to restore the Union, the more he should 
fight the less Union he would have. He had probably 
concluded that harmony was more likely to come by his 
sitting on the Potomac and waiting for it to turn up; 
and he might have been sitting there still if the country 
had not been of a different opinion. 



102 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

Andy Johnson goes to Tennessee, and pleads with that 
people to see that the Old Union is reestablished in that 
State, and his leading argument to them is that Slavery, 
now in a precarious condition, will thereby be secured 
more firmly than ever. In the present representative po- 
sition of Mr. Johnson, we must conclude that our govern- 
ment would be only too happy to clasp the broken arch 
with the old keystone which has just crumbled. But there 
are two classes in this country, either of which holds the 
balance of power, which will take care that no such re- 
union takes place. One class resides in the Cotton States. 
The Cabinet need never hold any love feasts for Jeff and 
his companions. In Ireland, where the priests pray over the 
little fields of the peasantry to assist their fertility, a priest 
once came to a particularly barren and hard-looking patch 
of ground, and said, " Brethren, there 's no use in praying 
here ; this needs manure." I think when Father Abraham 
looks over the fence of the Cotton States, if he ever does, he 
will come to a similar conclusion about the efficacy of par- 
doning grace. The other class which, should the South 
submit to-morrow, would prevent any return to the old 
Union, is the class of honest freemen throughout the land. 
The battle of Armageddon is one that never ceases. Let 
the Cabinets at Washington and Richmond join again 
around the communion table, with the blood of the Christ 
crucified between them upon it, — and the old siege of 
Liberty against the Union, which has been raised for a 
moment, begins again. Garrison, the old standard-bearer, 
will unfurl his banner of Disunion, which he keeps only 
tucked away in the '' Liberator " room, as Bennett of the 
" Herald " keeps the Confederate flag. The clear bugle of 
Phillips sounds the old martial call again. And all along 
the sky sleeping thunders will awaken, and ten thousand 



WAR FOR THE UNION 103 

trumpets proclaim that the siege against the ancient 
wrong is renewed, — the siege whose arrows are thoughts, 
whose shells are fiery inspirations of truth, whose sword 
is the Spirit of a just God. All this will go on until the 
ballot-box is conquered again, and some such man as 
Wendell Phillips is elected President. Then another 
Sumter gun will be heard. Then will come the war of which 
the present is but a picket skirmish. John Brown will be 
commanding general of all our forces then ; and all will 
not be quiet on the Potomac. His soul will go marching 
on ; 't is a way it has. 

For I fear that over the eye of this nation Slavery has 
gradually formed a hard cataract, so that it cannot see 
the peace and glory which are an arm's-length before it, 
— a cataract which only the painful surgery of the sword 
can remove. If it be so, we can only say, — Bleed, poor 
country ! Let thy young men be choked with their blood ; 
let the pale horse trample loving hearts and fairest homes ; 
if only thus thou canst learn that God also has his gov- 
ernment, and that all injustice is secession from that 
government, which his arm of might will be sure to crush 
out! 

Those who oppose the method of emancipation allege 
that it would exasperate the South to the utmost, would 
alienate them forever from us, would unite the Border 
States with them, and unite them all against us as one 
man. 

The fear of exasperating the South reminds one of the 
toper, who said that when it got to be twelve o'clock of 
the night he did not care when he went home, for his wife 
was by that time as mad as she could be, and an hour or 
so made no difference. The South has about filled the 



104 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

gamut of wrath. Nor have we seen miicli difference in its 
treatment of such Southern pro-slavery men as General 
Anderson and his brother Charles, and anti-slavery men. 
So far as our experience in this war goes, they had as lief 
a man should be a Garrisonian as a Lincolnite. 

So far as the objection relates to the supposition that 
an edict of emancipation would turn the Border States 
against us, it, being military, may easily be met as such 
by the fact that, even if a million people became estranged 
from us (the very largest estimate), such an edict would 
at once bring four millions (the slaves) to our side. And 
mark the difference between those who would go and those 
who would come. 

The million who went would prove by their going that 
they were pretended, or at least half-hearted friends ; they 
would show that their loyalty was but a cover for the 
preservation of Slavery, that the Union meant for them 
nothing, if not human chattels. The four millions who 
would be riveted to our side by this one blow would be 
those upon whom we might depend, since their every pos- 
sible interest would then be involved in our success. Now^ 
it is the interest of the negro that the country should be 
divided, unless he is to be emancipated ; for disunion would 
at least bring Freedom's southern line down to Mason and 
Dixon's. 

The million who would abandon our cause would be 
chiefly on the border, within territory already under mili- 
tary occupation ; their disaffection would only need a 
little more vigilance on our part, and that would be a wise 
thing in any case. The four niillions who would be our de- 
termined co-labourers from that moment are chiefly in 
disloyal territory under rebel occupation ; they are there 
where we are striving, by expensive and perilous expedi- 



HOW TO HITCH OUR WAGON TO A STAR 105 

tions, to carry Union men ; and by being salable property 
they are protected as no other soldiers we could have there 
would be. 

Thus, even so far as the two are of military importance, 
the emancipation method offers far more than the mere 
fighting method. But there is another force brought into 
the action by emancipation which would change this war 
of disunion into a putting forth of unifying energies, which 
would be as irresistible in establishing our social unity as 
are our mountains and valleys and rivers in establishing 
our geographical unity. 



HOW TO HITCH OUR WAGON TO A STAB 

It is one of the signs of the times that the revolution was 
strong enough to take up bodily the Sage of Concord and 
set him in the capital of this nation to instruct our rulers. 
The advice he gave them may be summed up in the one 
sentence. Hitch your wagon to a star ! 

Why not, Mr. President ! You have some difficulty in 
making things go, possibly have some doubt as to whether 
they can be made to go ; but if you could manage to hitch 
the Union to a star, tliat will be sure to move. If you can 
get the laws of nature to aid in the reunion of North and 
South, you need not fear any Confederate efforts at keep- 
ing them apart. 

The very intensity and virulence of the hatred which 
the South has for the North suggest that the feeling is 
extremely morbid, and not very deep. It is not deliberate, 
nor based on any actual difference, and for that very rea- 
son must make up in violence what it lacks in the nature of 
things. This hatred also has sprung up too quickly to have 



106 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

mucli depth or genuineness. It was within a comparatively 
recent period that the South was one with the North. We 
are of the same blood; our fathers were within our mem- 
ory united. Section has intermarried with section. 

There has been but one Satanic divider who has opened 
a chasm between us, — Slavery. The interests of Slavery 
cannot be made the interests of free society; and there 
cannot be one institution of free society — such as the free 
press, and free speech, and free school — which is not a 
bombshell for Slavery. Free society being necessarily a 
continual assault upon Slavery, Slavery hates the North. 
It is not the Southern man, it is the virus of Slavery in 
his veins, which hates the North; as the Indian plead 
before the court, that not he, but the whiskey, committed 
the murder. Take that virus away, my Northern friend, 
and he is a Saxon man, she a Saxon woman, like your- 
self. 

The writer of these pages was reared in the midst of 
hatred and contempt of the Northern people, and did him- 
self hate and despise them cordially during all his early 
youth; he held it to be his highest ambition to assist in 
severing that section from the North. But fortune led him 
to a year's residence in a little Quaker settlement where 
Slavery did not exist, and which consequently was an oasis 
upon a Slavery-wasted desert; and with this one step out 
of the atmosphere of Slavery, with the first glance of doubt 
toward that institution, a cloud of illusions cleared up, the 
antipathy to Northern men disappeared, and he experi- 
enced a revulsion in their favor which did them even more 
than justice. 

He knows, moreover, the leaders of the Southern Re- 
bellion, many of them personally, all of them by charac- 
ter, and knows them to be very earnest madmen ; he knows 



HOW TO HITCH OUR WAGON TO A STAR 107 

that the North can, by sealing up the one source of mad- 
ness and disunion which has within a few years brought 
about this alienation, wither it up forever. 

France and England had a much longer and more ran- 
corous feud than this between the North and the South. 
"I will fight a Frenchman," said Lord Nelson, " wherever 
I can find him; wherever he can anchor, my ship shall 
be there." But a year of a common interest made them 
allies ; lately their sovereigns exchanged visits ; and it is 
the estimate of the best judges that the current generation 
will bear to its grave all memory of the feud between the 
English and the French. 

Men will love, and if need be die for, that by which 
they and their families live. If Slavery is the basis of 
their homes; if from slave institutions comes the bread 
that sustains the life of wife and child, then they will fight 
and die for Slavery. If the home, the bread of wife and 
child, are derived from free institutions, then for these 
men will fight and die. Did we only compel the people of 
the South to get their daily bread from free institutions, 
in less than five years they would be ready to fight and 
die by our sides for free institutions. They would call the 
Yankees by hard names for some years after, no doubt, 
but there could be no war between the sections ; on the 
contrary, every healing influence in the universe would be 
at work to cure these lacerations made by the tomahawk 
of Slavery, which would then be buried. 

When Freedom folds her blessed wings over both North 
and South, then every steamer, every car, every tele- 
graphic line plying between them, will be a shuttle cease- 
lessly weaving together the hearts of their millions into 
one woof of interest and affection. 

But who can enumerate or utter one in a thousand of 



108 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

the unswerving, all-compelling laws with which those who 
trust in Everlasting Justice ally themselves: steadfast 
upon their orbits, my masters, these stars will surely 
move, and no Southern Sisera shall be a match for them 
in their courses. But we must hitch our cause to them: 
the Sage said, — We cannot bring the heavenly powers to 
us, but if we will only choose our jobs in directions in 
which they travel, they will undertake them with the 
greatest pleasure. It is a peremptory rule with them, that 
they never go out of their road. 

XI 

THROUGH SELF-CONQUEST TO CONQUEST 

A Greek fable relates that when Hercules and Achelous 
fought together, Achelous changed himself into the form 
of a mad bull, thinking to contend more strongly; but 
Hercules retained the/brm of a man^ and seizing the horn 
of the bull, it broke off in his hand, and became the cele- 
brated cornucopia. 

One very obvious interpretation of this fable is that it 
is always best to take the bull by the horns. But I use it 
for the ancient testimony it conveys in favour of the 
superiority of the purely human power over the greatest 
animal ferocity. 

How rarely has Slavery, in its violent advance, been 
met in the manly way; how much oftener by the fawning 
of hounds ! And it is just this unmanly attitude which the 
representatives of the North have so long assumed that has 
invited the arrogant demands of Slavery which are now 
resisted with bloodshed. Mr. Goodall of Cleveland, Ohio, 
under affidavit to prove John Brown's insanity, related 
that once, when on the cars with him, they fell into some 



SELF-CONQUEST TO CONQUEST 109 

conversation concerning Slavery, and in reply to some 
of Brown's radicalism, "I attempted," says Goodall, "to 
point out a more conservative course, remarking very 
kindly to him that Kentucky, in my opinion, would have 
been a free State ere this, had it not been for the excite- 
ment and prejudices engendered by ultra abolitionists of 
Ohio. At this remark he rose to his feet, with clenched 
fist, eyes rolling like an insane man (as he most assuredly 
was), and remarked that the South would become free 
within one year, were it not that there were too many such 
scoundrels as myself to rivet the chains of Slavery." In- 
nocent Goodall of Cleveland! how little did you know that 
you were seeing a picture then which Art and Poetry will 
combine to celebrate as one of the first gleams of sanity 
out of a nation's long lunacy ! That remark of Brown's is 
precisely the sanest I ever heard. If the North went South 
nobly. Slavery would clear away like a phantom of night. 
Whatever be the faults of Southerners, they do like those 
who stand up squarely for their principles ; in all my life 
in the South I never remember to have heard a dough- 
face in the North spoken of otherwise than with con- 
tempt. 

Let me relate a conversation literally as it occurred a 
few years ago in Eichmond, Virginia. Some New York 
lawyer had in the case of the Lemmon slaves, which in- 
volved a principle important to the South, argued the case 
successfully for Lemmon and Slavery. He then came down 
to Virginia to be lionized. A dinner was given in Rich- 
mond by persons connected with the legislature, to which 
this lawyer was invited. Here is the conversation, just as 
it ocurred across the table from the lawyer, between two 
members : — 

1st Member, "I don't think much of that man." 



110 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

2d Member, "Nor I." 

1st Mem. "He isn't a gentleman; but it's well enougli 
to have such men up North." 

2d Mem. "They 're useful enough." 

1st Mem. " Tom, why is it they never raise any gentle- 
men up North?" 

2d Mem. " Oh, I 've been North, and I tell you they do 
have gentlemen ; but then they 're all damned Abolition- 
ists." 

Virginia said to Edward Everett, "I envy not the 
heart or the head of the man who, trained amid free 
institutions, comes down to defend Human Slavery";^ 
to John Brown Virginia said, "He is firm, truthful, 
intelligent, — the gamest man I ever saw."^ 

Sitting, last summer, in the porch of a hotel at New- 
port, Ehode Island, I heard the original conversation 
between a Northerner and Southerner which W. Shake- 
speare has travestied by premeditation in the following 
conversation between Hamlet and Polonius: — 

Ham. Do you see yonder cloud, that 's almost in the 
shape of a camel? 

Pol. By the mass, and 't is like a camel, indeed. 
Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel. 
Pol. It is backed like a weasel. 
Ham. Or like a whale. 
Pol. Very like a whale. 

The Hamlet in this case was a wealthy semi-Southerner, 
with secession sympathies, thinly disguised under a few 
star-spangled phrases ; the compliant Polonius was from 
Boston, where the largest and the smallest things are said 
and done of any place on this continent. In Boston you 
shall find your noblest and your meanest man ; there you 

1 Henry A. Wise. ^ John Randolph of Boanoke. 



SELF-CONQUEST TO CONQUEST 111 

shall find the faithful Senator who will stand for Freedom 
until he is stricken down, and there the creature who will 
touch glasses with the assassin of his own Senator within 
two squares of the prostrate form. We had brutes enough 
in Cincinnati to mob Wendell Phillips; but no man who 
could write a sentence could be found here who would 
justify it : the mob had to go to Beacon Street, Boston, 
for a defender; the "Courier" was ready to do their 
work! But where else could we have found a Phillips? 

But, to return, the conversation between the two men 
in Newport, both persons of distinction, was exactly 
given in the extract from Hamlet. The Bostonian atoned 
for saying that he favored the Union, by allowing every 
noble idea and name of America, and especially of his own 
State, to be vilified in his presence. 

When is this contemptible and cowardly abasement to 
end ? Will the line of such poltroons hold out to the crack 
of doom? I add my testimony to that of Miss Grimk^, 
Mr. Helper, Mattie Griffith, and other natives of the 
South who have caught a glimpse of the monster, whose 
coils have been tightening about the dear land they have 
been compelled to leave, and who are doing their utmost 
to rescue it; with them I declare that I have known 
nothing so heart-sickening, so chilling, so utterly diaboli- 
cal as that which calls itself conservatism in the North. 

When I first set foot in New England, I met, at a 

table in Boston, the Hon. Mr. . Hearing that I was 

from the South, he instantly turned his attention to me, 
and began a series of adulations of Southern institutions 
and people; apologizing for his own region; sneering at 
the liberal men of New England as a very small band of 
crazy folk ! What deathly colds fell on me then I pray 
may never fall on him! Through how many toils and 



11^ THE GOLDEN HOUR 

struggles had I come to rest upon the free heart of New 
England ; by what weary marches and flinty paths had I 
come to do homage to those men at whom he was sneering, 
as to heralds of this nation's promised land! I turned, 
and told him plainly that he had mistaken my opinions, 
which were not those common in the South ; and that I 
could not help thinking that such disparagements of free 
men and institutions, on the part of those whom they had 
fostered, were like tempting with alcohol an inebriate 
whose family is starving at home. 

I have in my mind a case of a very different kind. It 
was, I believe, about eight years ago that I was consulted 
by a committee at New Haven as to whether I knew 
any gentleman in the South who would be willing to 
deliver a lecture in New Haven in defence of the insti- 
tution of Slavery. My mind fixed upon George Fitzhugh 
of King George County, Virginia, who had written works 
on the " Failure of Free Society," and " The Sociology of 
the South." Mr. Fitzhugh went to New Haven, and gave, 
on the evening of his arrival, a lecture entitled, "Free 
Society a Failure." Wendell Phillips was present and 
heard the lecture, and Mr. Fitzhugh evidently took 
pleasure in seeing him. Fitzhugh's method of proving 
Free Society a failure was by theories and speculations 
which had got into crevices and under the eaves of his 
brain, like the bats in the rickety old mansion, situated 
on the fag-end of a once noble estate, in which he resided. 
This spot of "the sacred soil" he had never left for a 
month, and of Free Society, of course, knew nothing. At 
New Haven he fell, I am happy to say, into very different 

hands from those of the Hon. Mr. of Boston, or Po- 

lonius at Newport. He was the guest of that honest and 
noble man, if God ever made one, the late Mr. Samuel 



SELF-CONQUEST TO CONQUEST 113 

Foote. On the next morning after the lecture Mr. Foote 
took Mr. Fitzhugh in a buggy, and drove throughout the 
beautiful town of New Haven and its environs; showed 
him houses and cottages which would be marvels of ele- 
gance in Virginia, and informed him, without any allusion 
to log-cabins, that many of these mansions belonged to 
mechanics, and some even to day-labourers. Fitzhugh was 
thunder-stricken. He had proved Free Society a failure 
without ever leaving his State; nobody replied to him, 
but he went home answered. He always preserved an 
ominous silence about the visit ; but he acknowledged his 
mistake about Northern society, and though before that 
he had invariably printed a pamphlet every six months 
in favor of the "Sociology of the South," I believe he 
has not penned a line of the kind since. The grave and 
impressive rebuke of Samuel Foote, who simply said that 
he "would take him (Fitzhugh) out to see how Free 
Society had failed," was never lost. Mr. Foote was a 
gentleman in an old sense, which is sometimes forgotten 
even in scholastic Boston; that is, he was gentle^ but 
always man. 

If Northern men would of tener refrain from abnegating 
their manhood and slandering their own country, — did 
they act this manly and gentle part toward Southern 
men, — I can imagine many benefits which must flow 
from such a course. The South would respect the North, 
and the sentiment of the North. The South always be- 
lieved that the North would cringe to the last, as she had 
been doing for fifty years. What say you, gentlemen, are 
we done cringing? Or is Mr. Vallandigham and his pos- 
ture to be first endured, then pitied, then embraced, as, 
according to the poet, is the way with moral monsters ? 
" I do not trust him," said Eichelieu of the soldier; "he 



114 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

bows too low." Hamlet never despises Polonius more than 
when the latter fools him to the top of his bent. Had the 
North been determined, outspoken, and faithful to herself, 
she must have been faithful also to the South, and might 
have averted the tumor which now eats into her Southern 
brother's heart, instead of fostering it. 

"What mighty matter,'* says the Brahmin, "is the 
subjugation of the sea-girt earth to those who cannot sub- 
due themselves." Not until we have conquered this dap- 
perness and inhumanity in ourselves ; not until the North 
ceases to ask what shall be done with negroes ; not until 
the infamy of Illinois Black Laws is held to be deeper 
than Carolina Slave Laws, — can we gain any noble vic- 
tory. Through self-control lies the only path to control ; 
at present we have as yet to prove that we are worthy to 
win the victories of Liberty and Law. 

When the North rises fully to the stature of manhood, 
and grasps the sharp horn of the Southern Achelous with 
a human hand, — no longer meeting horn with horn, — 
then that horn will break off, and become for this nation 
the horn of plenty. A touch of pure humanity can make 
this Rebellion yield a fruitage of peace, prosperity, and 
honour for which we might otherwise have had to wait a 
century. Ah, had we a Hercules, knowing that hand is 
stronger than horn, to guide us ! 

XII 

A POST-PRANDIAL POINT 

At a dinner given in Washington to Mr. Prentice, Mr. 
Secretary Smith, replying with warmth to some strong 
anti-slavery sentiments which had just been uttered by 
Mr. Cameron, said : " If we, being eighteen millions, can- 



A POST-PRANDIAL POINT 115 

not put down this rebellion of six millions without freeing 
their slaves, we ought to give the war up." 

Doubtless the Secretary, when he got off this bit of 
wisdom, had been paying more attention to his own Inte- 
rior than to that of the country. 

Six bad men can burn up a half-dozen blocks of a city, 
and destroy a thousand lives, before they could be arrested. 
It would be a fine thing for such to retain at their trial 
Mr. Smith, whose opening position would be : " Gentle- 
men of the Jury, if several blocks of a city and hundreds 
of people cannot keep from being burnt up by six men, 
they ought to be burnt up ! '* 

The remark brings before us the inequality of the com- 
batants in this war. 

Some years ago Daniel Webster was challenged to a 
duel by some booby from Texas (I believe), whose range 
of ability was limited to the skilful use of rifle and bowie- 
knife. Mr. Webster was inclined to accept the challenge ; 
but his friends interfered, and declared that the stakes 
were unequal ; that such a brain as that of Daniel Web- 
ster's could not be risked against even many hundreds of 
Texans, much less this bore. They were willing that a 
certain mad bull at Marshfield should meet the Texan, 
but compelled Mr. Webster to decline. 

The reading public is now reading with delight the 
exquisite delineations of Theodore Winthrop. You who 
have read "Cecil Dreeme," "John Brent," and "Edwin 
Brothertoft," think a moment of such an imagination, 
such culture, being at the mercy of some wretched little 
drummer-boy! Where are his equals in the South? or 
those of Lyon, of Baker, or of Fitz- James O'Brien? 

But these are minor inequalities, and we allude to them 
only to remember that there is a fearful inequality in the 



116 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

institutions which produce such men as those I have 
named, and those which produce Floyds and Twiggses in 
shoals, but to eight millions of men not one literary or 
scientific man of any importance. 

Americans ! we have no right to imperil liberty one 
hour, nor to allow it to remain in peril, that we may show 
the world that we can "whip the South." The point 
which the Secretary of the Interior raised is but a point 
of sectional vanity, and it is far beneath the tremendous 
issue in this crisis. Is it a point of pride with Freedom to 
prove that it excels Slavery as butcher of men ? When 
this war began, the successes were more frequently on the 
side of Slavery, and the wisest said : " There are glorious 
obstacles to the success of the North ! Free institutions 
do not breed the requisite number of Floyds and Twiggses 
— thieves and traitors — for this work; Freedom's sons 
cannot hate and sting like vipers ; they will not poison 
springs, and put up false banners to lure a foe into traps." 
There was room for some pride in that direction. But 
these glorious obstacles are fading ; the thirst for South- 
ern blood grows; and presently the North will be de- 
moralized enough to equal the recklessness and spite of 
Slavery. 

Once, says a fable, there was a stag which had long, 
branching horns, of which it was very proud ; but of its 
feet it was very much ashamed. One day this stag, pur- 
sued by hounds, found its despised feet quite serviceable ; 
and indeed the feet would have saved him had it not been 
for the horns of which he was so proud, for these becom- 
ing entangled in some bushes, the stag was overtaken by 
the hounds. 

The North can win no military laurels in this conflict ; 
should it gain the victory, the world will see as little glory 



THE PROBABILITIES OF INSURRECTION 117 

in it as it saw in our victory over Mexico. Let the Nortli 
not covet a distinction which she can never possess, thanks 
to the superior glories of Liberty ! To the proposition from 
South Carolina, that her sons should meet more than their 
number of Massachusetts men, and decide the issue in this 
country by this duel of States, a shrewd resident of the 
Old Bay proposed, as an amendment, that these should 
meet, but that, instead of using weapons of death, vast 
blank-books should be opened, and if a third more Massa- 
chusetts men could not write their own names than South 
Carolina men, the South should be declared victorious. 
That was rather cruel toward the Southerners, beneath 
whose rule, entirely great, the bowie-knife is mightier than 
the pen ; but it was from a man who had wit enough to 
know that Liberty's Code of Honour is a different one from 
that of Slavery. To that or any legitimate weapon we may 
confidently trust American Freedom ; but not one hour to 
the shifting chances of war, if we can help it, — not to the 
accident of a general's being drunk or sober, or the posi- 
tion of a ditch or fence. If these flimsy defences are the 
surest with which we can surround the world's trust to 
America, be sure the precious lamp will be removed to 
those who can keep it alive, though we be left in outer 
darkness. 

XIII 

THE PROBABILITIES OF INSURRECTION 

The experience of the Slave States has furnished reason 
to believe that no general and concerted insurrection of 
slaves can occur for many years. 

In estimating this question, several things are to be 
remembered : 1. That the negroes cannot generally write, 
or use the mails or the facilities of travel. They are un- 



118 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

doubtedly anxious enough for their freedom to strike any 
blow that might have a reasonable prospect of success; 
but they can see as readily as we that concert would be 
necessary, and that to any great extent is impossible. It 
will be remembered that the insurrection of Nat Turner 
and that planned by Denmark Vesey covered very small 
sections of the States in which they occurred, though they 
were the most expensive and elaborately prepared of all 
that have occurred. 2. The negroes are an extremely 
cautious people, and not at all self-reliant. Much of this 
is the result of their training. A negro may be browbeaten 
even into the confession of things he has not done ; and 
at a word of suspicion about any real offence, he at once 
supposes the master knows everything, and makes a clean 
breast of it. It is probably through these means, rather 
than deliberate treachery upon the part of any of them, 
that schemes of this kind have been so often betrayed by 
negroes themselves. 3. The negroes are superstitious, and 
in the direction of special providences. They believe gen- 
erally in luck and miracle, and the fatalism of the Baptist 
Church, to which they usually belong, helps to cut the 
sinews of their own right arms. " Who would be free, 
themselves must strike the blow," would be an incompre- 
hensible sentiment among them, and, in my opinion, it will 
never be true in their case. When their blow comes, it 
will be at the end of a long series of others' blows. They 
are always looking for their Moses, whom they would not 
follow unless he had his wonder-working rod along. 4. But 
the chief fetter worn by this race is the habit of servile 
obedience; the master's ordinary tone and cowhide are 
more irresistible than his musket and epaulets. 

Undoubtedly there will be in the future, as there have 
been in the past, here and there local insurrections; but 



THE PROBABILITIES OF INSURRECTION 119 

none that could excite a general panic in the South will 
this generation be apt to witness. 

On reflection, it will be seen that all of the forces above 
enumerated as those which will be likely to prevent any 
general slave insurrection are at the present time doubly 
active. In the present juncture, the slave has every in- 
ducement to remain quiet, none at all to rebel : neither 
side is ready to befriend him as an insurrectionist, both 
are helping him as a slave. He is, of the three parties in 
this contest, as he should be, infinitely the best off. At 
any rate, he is very sure not to rebel when every Southern 
eye is on the watch and every hand on the trigger. 

So those who are hoping to have their shoulders relieved 
of the burden of doing justice to these slaves will find that 
they will act as Paul and Silas when their prison was 
opened by an earthquake, who said to the frightened 
Macedonians, "Let the magistrates come and fetch us 
out." He certainly will not stir to befriend or welcome 
those who have not decided whether or not to exile him 
in case he becomes free ; who have not yet declared even 
those deserted by rebel masters to be free ; and who really 
show more aversion to personal proximity to him than his 
Southern master. 

But every one of the inward links which bind him now 
— his caution, superstition, and servile obedience — would 
be transferred to our banner on the instant that he should 
be declared free under it, and would curl about it like 
tendrils. Not insurrections, but stampedes, would at once 
follow our proclamation of freedom; and they would 
have to be, and would be, checked immediately. But to 
check them knocks into pi every column of the Southern 
army. 

The slave's heart everywhere is at this moment filled 



120 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

with the one burning idea of f reedon ; he is doing now 
exactly what his friends advised him to do, — sitting still ; 
he has shown great wisdom during this war. But he listens 
every hour of the night and day for the watchward which 
calls him to his feet. 

That word is not Confiscation ; it is not Colonization. 
Hearing people discussing and advocating every measure 
for these people except simple justice, one thinks of Cas- 
sim, loaded with treasures in the robbers' cave, with the 
door fast locked in his face, calling for it to open by every 
name but the one to which it really does open. He says, 
" Barley," and " oats," — but the door opens not a crack. 
Let our rulers take care that the Sesame which alone can 
open the door of success in this war is not first uttered, 
as in Cassim's case, by the robbers ; the side that first 
cries Freedom to the Slave gains the day in this war. 

"We hear some talk of arming the slaves : would it not 
be well first to try the effect of doing them simple, un- 
elaborate justice ? 

For that word the slave's heart far down on the South- 
ern plantations is now all ear. It is a common error to 
suppose that the slaves on the plantations of the far South 
are more ignorant, degraded, and obtuse, or that they are 
less informed in public matters, than those in the Border 
States. The contrary is truer. It has been for many gen- 
erations the invariable custom to send to these plantations 
of the Cotton and Sugar States every negro near the bor- 
der who at any time shows a desire for freedom, or who 
has attempted to run off, or has been overtaken, or who 
shows enough intelligence for an inference that he will 
be restive under the yoke. The number of overseers and 
strictness of patrol on these plantations make it compara- 
tively unimportant whether the slave is discontented or 



MERCY, AND NOT SACRIFICE 121 

otherwise. The consequence is that there has been through 
many years a gradual accumulation in the far South of the 
most inflammable and intelligent negroes ; and any serious 
insurrections would be far more apt to come from them 
than from their more comfortable Border State com- 
rades. 

But they listen on the border also for that word to 
whose Orphic music the hearts of men are made to dance, 
though they were as stone and trees. The Border State 
negro has had his senses whetted by a certain kind of per- 
petual fear and ever-recurring anguish. For these are the 
slave-breeding States. Not one half of the slaves born in 
any of the Border States are or can be retained there; 
the demand for them is insufficient. This makes the yoke 
through all this region terribly galling. Year by year par- 
ents watch the growth of their children, knowing that they 
cannot be kept at home, — that there each will be only 
another mouth to feed and back to clothe, — knowing that 
so soon as the year of the noblest promise and strength 
comes, it comes only to bring the bitter parting and 
heartbreak. No farmer gathers in his harvest more regu- 
larly than the slave-trader of the Border States, putting 
in his scythe this year for the human hearts which were 
not quite ripe for plantation service last year. 

Thus they listen, thus they watch, more than they that 
watch for the morning : God's captive Israel, of whom he 
says, They shall prosper who love thee ! 

XIV 

MERCY, AND NOT SACRIFICE 

Ajfter what has been said, there is no need that we shall 
dwell upon the objection, sometimes offered to an edict of 



122 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

emancipation, that it would cover the South with a cruel 
servile insurrection. 

Even if it were true, the objection is absurdly oblivious 
of the cruel white insurrection which is now raging in the 
South, to say nothing of its ignoring the chronic and per- 
petual insurrection against the rights and happiness of a 
whole race, which Slavery essentially is. 

But the history of every nation which has dared the 
guilty experiment of holding man as property repeats the 
warning of Schiller, — " Tremble before the man who has 
not yet broken his chain ; tremble not before the free- 
man." 

Though no insurrection of slaves can possibly come to 
do for us in this war what an edict of emancipation alone 
can do ; though for a generation, or generations, the slave 
may serve his Southern master ; yet, if that institution be 
allowed to survive this war, the South is delivered up as 
to the ever-narrowing circles of a whirlpool, which must 
bear it into its vortex, unless another war may once more 
give the nation the power to rescue that insane section. 
For these slaves must multiply until their enslavement 
becomes impossible. Any man, whose opinion is entitled 
to be listened to, knows that this institution is in the end 
a doomed institution. But we know, also, that slavehold- 
ing, like any other bad passion, grows with what it feeds 
on, and has thus been a more determined thing in the 
South with every successive year. If, then, in this Golden 
Hour, when we have the means already prepared and ready 
to prevent any evils which could occur, we do not, what 
is there in the future but a certain fearful looking for of 
judgment and fiery indignation ? 

Are you quite sure, O ye who are so fearful of servile 
insurrection, that, at any other period, if the South shall 



MERCY, AND NOT SACRIFICE 123 

cry, Help, — as she surely will, — we shall have a million 
men ready on the instant to shield her from carnage ?^'*"^ 

The social system of the South has been undermined by 
the hand of God : when, in eternal wisdom and truth, he 
laid the foundations of the world, he loved the human be- 
ing for which all was a mansion too well to permit any 
wrong to go on without retribution ; and under the founda- 
tions of all injustice he laid the trains which must in some 
way lay them in ruins. The fusee to that undermining is 
now in our hands: we may now fire it with fire from the 
altar of God, which can work no indiscriminate ruin ; but 
who shall tell the horrors if in the future that fusee shall 
be set on fire of hell? 

Nothing is more sad than when the human mind puts 
darkness for light, and light for darkness ; and I know of 
no case where it is done more dangerously than in calling 
that measure inhuman and cruel which is the only one not 
utterly pitiless to the South. 

The present attitude of the North is oppressive toward 
the South. The North seems disposed simply to cripple 
and limit Slavery, and yet about as anxious as the South 
to prevent emancipation. In other words, the North is 
opposed to freeing the slaves, but wishes so to limit the 
institution that it shall be a burden and a loss to those who 
hold it. For if the principles upon which the present Presi- 
dent was elected should prevail, and the slaves not freed, 
the institution would utterly impoverish the South; and 
the North would be enriched by it. It is our duty either to 
liberate the slaves or else to allow Slavery such protection 
and admission into all territories as will keep it from being 
a danger and a drag upon the South. I fear the North is 
anxious to preserve Slavery for the cotton and sugar it 
brings ; but anxious also to have all the lands and politi- 



124 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

cal power, without wliicli Slavery makes every white man 
as well as black man in the South a slave. 

You have no right to leave this tree on their lot girdled, 
so as to bear them no fruit, and be in their way, and an 
increasing danger also, rotting year by year for the blast 
under which it shall fall suddenly and inevitably. 

My fellow-men, there is every sign that our arms are 
steadily winning their way into the South. Let us consider 
gravely what it is we are carrying South as we march on. 
One thing we must carry, — devastation. We are far yet 
from the heart of the South, and they know little of the 
South who do not know that, as we approach nearer, the 
tragedy will deepen : our army will mark its track in blood, 
and find ashes where fair cities stood before. Now I do not 
say that all this ought not to take place if it is necessary ; 
there are things worse than such devastation ; but I do say 
that in this age of the world such devastation of human 
homes and hearts cannot be justified unless along with 
it we bear blessings greater than the devastation is evil. 

In my opinion, there is not a feature of Christianity 
which would not frown upon the idea that the sorrows 
which our victorious advance must bring upon the South 
can be justified by carrying a piece of bunting down there, 
or the mere governmental authority it represents. If this 
should prove to be, what Earl Russell declared it, "a 
struggle for power" only, the verdict of the civilized 
world will be, — shame ! Take any one who perished at 
Fort Donelson, loyal or rebel, and place that human 
being, with God's crown of intelligence upon his brow, 
beside that mass of stone and brush-wood which was sur- 
rendered, and any thinking person will know which is of 
more importance, the mass of brute matter which human 
hands could rear in a month, or that immortal being of 



MERCY, AND NOT SACRIFICE 125 

heart and brain, which, once prostrated, not the combined 
skill of the world can rebuild. 

The proverb says, "Faithful are the wounds of a 
friend " ; and if we were smiting the South to heal her of 
the withering curse that is upon her, our wounds will be 
far more friendly than all those weak compromises and 
indulgences by which the North has for years helped to 
fasten her curse upon her. An amnesty for the South 
leaving her Slavery would be the bitterest wrong and 
cruelty we could inflict on her. 

Humanity, Christianity, would welcome and justify any 
severity necessary to relieve the South of that curse, as 
they would the severity of the surgeon's probe, for the 
overbalancing benefit it brings. The friend of humanity 
could then patiently see more bloodshed than the land has 
yet witnessed, if he knew that this blood was shed for the 
remission of the nation's sin, the removal of its pitiless 
curse. 

And yet, what are we actually carrying South with 
our arms? After the surrender of Fort Donelson, the first 
thing done was to run up the United States banner; the 
second thing was to return to rebel masters twelve slaves 
found therein. This was boasted of by a Kentucky Sen- 
ator in the Senate, and the author of the deed went unre- 
buked. But we got through him at Shiloh as heavy a blow 
as those twelve negroes got. We shall find that all the 
orders "No. 3 " will come home to roost. At Port Royal a 
negro, deserted by his master, came within our lines, and, 
addressing Colonel Lee, said, " Will you please, sir, tell me^ 
if I am a free man ? " Colonel Lee was dumb. The govern- 
ment is dumb.^ As yet you, my countrymen, are dumb. 

^ The following touching lyric was placed in my hand, soon after hear- 
ing of this incident, by one who has already given us that which is worthy 



126 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

Whatever title the Southern States may have had to 
hold slaves, no man has yet been bold enough to claim 
that the United States has a title to hold them ; yet it is 
restraining of their freedom thousands of men as free as 
the President. The President has just imported a million 
slaves into the States of Georgia, Florida, and South Caro- 
lina. A pretty big beam, I think, the Northern eye is 
carrying, as it goes to pull out the mote in the Southern 
eye ! Buchanan announced that the Constitution carries 
Slavery wherever it goes : it has remained for the first 

to be incorporated with the "John Brown Song," as the " Battle Hymn 
of the Republic " : ^ — 

Tell me, master, am I free ? 

From the prison-land I come, 
From a wrecked humanity, 
From the fable of a home, — 

From the market where my wife, 

With my baby at her breast, 
Faded from my narrow life. 

Rudely bartered and possest. 

Masters, ye are fighting long, 

Well your trumpet-blast we know : 

Are ye come to right a wrong ? 
Do we call you friend or foe ? 

Will ye keep me, for my faith, 

From the hound that scents my track ? 

From the riotous, drunken breath, 
From the murder at my back ? 

God must come, for whom we pray, 

Knowing his deliverance true ; 
Shall our men be left to say. 

He must work it free of you ? 

Links of an unsighted chain 
Bound the spirit of our braves ; 

Waiting for the nobler strain. 
Silence told him we were slaves. 



THE CONSECRATION OF HEROISM 127 

Republican government to make the theory fact. But is 
to do this worth the heartbreaks, the butchery, by which 
alone we can march South ? 



XV 

THE CONSECRATION OF HEROISM 

In the old Hebrew Chronicles it is related that on one 
occasion David was in an hold, and the garrison of the 
Philistines was in Bethlehem. " And David longed, and 
said, O that one would give me drink of the water of the 
well of Bethlehem which is by the gate ! And the three 
mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, 
and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by 
the gate, and took it, and brought it to David ; neverthe- 
less he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto 
the Lord. And he said. Be it far from me, O Lord, that 
I should do this; is not this the blood of the men that 
went in jeopardy of their lives ? Therefore he would not 
drink it." 

Thus to all noble minds heroism is forever consecrated, 
and consecrates all it touches. The commonest things have 
a new and higher value, when they become associated with 
deeds of devotion and courage. The cross, to which the 
Christian world clings, was not a whit more respectable 
than a gaUows, until a Hero's blood consecrated it. 

Our countrymen, our companions, friends, and relatives 
have gone forth, in jeopardy of their lives, to recover for 
this nation certain forts, arsenals, territories, — for which 
the nation longed. This nation does not yet see that when 
these forts and States are recovered for us, stained with the 
ruddy blood of thousands of its noble youth, — each the 
monument of fallen heroes, — they will seem very differ- 



ns THE GOLDEN HOUR 

ent from forts and arsenals ; that, if thus recovered, they 
will be altars consecrated to the humanity which died to 
rescue them, flaming with the fires of Justice and Liberty. 

The first American Revolution began as a protest 
against a tax upon tea and a few other articles. Even 
after Concord and Lexington, the removal of a few pence 
from the duty on tea would have stopped the war. At this 
distance that looks to us as a very insignificant fight ; one 
might almost call it a tempest in a teapot. 

But so did it not remain. The tea reddened with the 
blood of noble hearts, as did the water of Bethlehem when 
it came to the king. Battle after battle came ; men went 
on to death as to their beds ; and from the fires of war 
emerged the grand figure of Independence. Then all the 
duties might have been taken off, but America would not 
have drank to the health of a tryant what had now be- 
come the blood of her noble sons ; nothing less than entire 
independence was worthy so costly a libation. 

In the month of August, 1776,^ immediately after the 
defeat of the Americans on Long Island, and whilst that 
disaster was not only demoralizing the army under Wash- 
ington, but spreading dismay and consternation among 
the most resolute of the advocates of Independence, Gen- 
eral Howe, wishing to take advantage of the terror which 
victory inspires, and persuading himself that the Ameri- 
cans, disheartened by so many checks, would be more 
modest in their pretensions, despatched General Sullivan 
to Congress, with a message purporting that, though he 

^ This incident was briefly alluded to in The Bejected Stone ; the num- 
ber of inquiries which have been made of me concerning it, and its appro- 
priateness to the argument of this chapter, encourage me to condense the 
account from Carlo Botta's History, in which alone I have been able to 
find it, though it is certainly one of the most striking of our Revolutionary 
records. 



THE CONSECRATION OF HEROISM 129 

could not consistently treat with that assembly in the 
character they had assumed, yet he would gladly confer 
with some of their members in their private capacity, and 
would meet them at any place they would appoint. He 
informed them that he was empowered, with the admiral, 
his brother, to terminate the contest between Great Brit- 
ain and America upon conditions equally advantageous 
to both. He assured them that, if they were inclined to 
enter into an agreement, much might be granted them 
which they had not required. He concluded by saying 
that, should the conference produce the probability of an 
accommodation, the authority of Congress would be ac- 
knowledged, in order to render the treaty valid and com- 
plete in every respect. To this Congress made answer, 
through General Sullivan, that the Congress of the Free 
and Independent States of America could not, consistently 
with the trust reposed in them, send their members to con- 
fer with any one whomsoever, otherwise than in their pub- 
lic capacity. But that, as they desired that peace might be 
concluded upon equitable conditions, they would depute a 
committee of their body to learn what proposals they had 
to offer. The deputies appointed by Congress to hear the 
propositions of the British commissioners (General Howe 
and Admiral Lord Howe) were Benjamin Franklin, John 
Adams, and Edward Rutledge, all three zealous advocates 
of independence. The interview took place on September 
11, on Staten Island, opposite Amboy, where the British 
general had his headquarters. 

The result of the interview showed to what a height the 
war, which began about a paltry tax, had risen under the 
tuition of Heroism. The British commanders offered every 
concession, with complete amnesties and indemnities, jpro- 
vided only that they would lay down their arms and 



130 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

submit to the authority of England, But the Americans, 
staggering though they were under a disastrous defeat, — ■ 
dark, too, as was the prospect of three millions fighting 
against the strongest power on earth, — utterly and firmly 
refused to submit to anything less than their entire inde- 
pendence. 

This was England's last effort to settle the difficulty by 
negotiation. Immediately thereafter she put forth her 
whole strength to compel submission ; but had England 
only known it, she was conquered already, when in the 
midst of darkness and disaster there remained to confront 
her a spirit too noble to compromise Liberty, too royal to 
cool even the the fevered lips of war with an ignoble peace, 
and offer to Despotism the blood of heroes. 

Our public speakers know very well that in speaking of 
" the Union cemented by the blood of our fathers," they 
touch a chord in the popular heart which never fails to 
respond. That is because it is a true chord. Every river 
and valley of it has been touched with the chrism of self- 
sacrifice. But here is more blood poured out: what will 
that cement? Is it only to cement the broken walls of 
Sumter? Is it only to recover a section for freemen to be 
tarred and feathered in — a Congress for honest Senators 
to be assassinated in ? Is that what your son has gone to 
cement with his blood? Are we giving up the best blood 
in our land that our flag may again unfurl its heaven- 
born colours for the protection of the chain and the lash 
and the block where immortal beings are sold as cattle ? 

There is where we started: the old Union just as it 
was, with every chain in it, every shamble, every scourge, 
every barbarism, — that is what our own valiant men 
brake the ranks of the Philistines to get for us. But al- 
ready things give signs of change. People are saying, 



A POSSIBLE BABYLON 131 

This war will be sure to end Slavery, — the wish being 
father to the thought. That is only the first flush on the 
water. Let us see a little more heroic blood shed, and 
people will say, This war shall end Slavery. 

A man who announces — and this is said with all defer- 
ence to the Secretary of State — that a bloody revolution 
shall sweep over a country, and leave that country, and 
every human being in it, in the same condition as before, 
must be in the counsel of that highly conservative angel 
at the Creation who was seized with a dreadful appre- 
hension lest the very foundations of Chaos should be un- 
settled. To expect that this revolution, whilst working 
changes similar to those which revolution has wrought in 
all history, will leave Slavery as it was before in the 
land, is to expect a conflagration enveloping a house to 
burn up the stone and iron, and leave the woodwork 
standing. 

XVI 

A POSSIBLE BABYLON 

Who can misread or doubt the prophecies written broadly 
over all the mountains, prairies, savannahs, lakes, and 
rivers of this superb continent? What heart can have a 
misgiving that these grandeurs have been prepared for a 
race of slaves? Does Niagara thunder of the great era of 
slave-coffles? Does the Mississippi suggest a race of clay- 
eaters on its shores? Do the great rivets between North 
and South, the Kocky, the Alleghany, the Blue Kidge 
mountains, foretell that the rivets of moral and political 
union on this continent are to be perpetual fear on one 
side and menace on the other, as they have been for years, 
— a union crumbling through very rottenness? 

Every hilltop in America is a Pisgah, from which can 



132 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

be seen the Promised Land of Liberty, which this nation 
is sure sooner or later to enter. 

But meanwhile there are dreary forty-year wanderings 
in desert places, which may have to come ere we are wor- 
thy to enter our Canaan of Freedom and Prosperity. 
Worse than all, there is a possible Babylonish captivity 
toward which it were well for this generation anxiously to 
look. The fearful retribution which befell Israel for its 
idolatry is never absent from the paths of such nations as 
turn aside from their own God to worship alien idols. 
Slavery is for this nation the alien idol, and its worship 
may yet have to be burnt out of us by a similar fiery trial. 

There is a current phrase which says, "This war is 
.bound to be the death of Slavery." It seems to me a very 
thoughtless speech. How^ do we expect emancipation to 
come? Is it to be as a shower of gold? The proverb says, 
"What will you have, quoth God; pay for it and take it." 
We shall have freedom from our national curse, not by 
any luck, but when we are up to paying the fair price ; if 
there is enough humanity and common sense in the coun- 
try to destroy Slavery, it will be destroyed, and not other- 
wise. No doubt Slavery wiU end, but this government 
may never live to see the day. 

We actually hear people saying, "When this war is 
ended, we can have a convention, and agree upon some plan 
for the gradual abolition of Slavery." 

When this war is ended ! This is much as when Paddy, 
after vainly endeavouring to put on a pair of new boots, 
remarked that he feared he would never be able to get 
those boots on until he had worn them a day or two.' 

Perhaps the highest secret which the Oriental philoso- 
phy hit upon was the peristaltic movement of the universe. 



A POSSIBLE BABYLON 133 

The idea was that the visible universe was the integument 
of a great living soul, and that, in its onward progress, 
the vital form from time to time shed, as a snake its skin, 
this integument, whose spots were galaxies. 

As long as the skin is alive and adjusted to its move- 
ment, the snake bears it onward ; but when a newer one 
has been formed underneath, the snake pauses, contracts, 
and the old skin shrivels ; one full-length stretch, and it 
is left in the path. 

Onward by the perfect law the living essence of Society 
moves also : the customs, creeds, institutions of any age 
are the spots of its variegated skin. Bright and beautiful 
are these scales when vital and necessary. Presently they 
get rusty, and must be shed. Then all the living forces 
contract, and the old is cast. Nothing not dead can ever 
he sloughed off. Revolutions such as Christianity, Pro- 
testantism, that which secured American Independence, 
that which is now abolishing Slavery, are the successive 
shrivellings of the rusty cuticle, as the living body of So- 
ciety moves onward. 

The former status of this country can never be restored, 
more than a snake can creep back into and inhabit the 
skin it has shed on the wayside. But, reader, have you not 
in your life found some poor snake still partially fettered 
to its "body of death," — snake in motionless distress, 
which, having stretched out from its shrivelled skin, must 
needs stretch back and wait ? The last state of that snake 
is worse than the first for a time. 

In this revolution we may get free. But if we do not, 
before any truce comes, cast the old Slavery-skin of this 
nation, we shall go back for a while into a state of things 
which even the Democrats would shudder to behold. If, 
now that Slavery and freedom are, by the new power 



1S4 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

opened, for the first time left to tlie choice of the Ameri- 
can people, they shall deliberately select Slavery, Slavery 
they will get with a vengeance ! For things would have to 
be worse to be better. We should witness a rule of Slavery 
so galling and fearful that the North would be scourged 
into a revolution. 

There is no St. Patrick who can rid this land of old-line 
Democrats. Now and then there is a cry that the Demo- 
cratic party is dead ; and if it were not in league with the 
Devil, if bullets could kill it, it would have been dead long 
ago. In a play called "The Vampyre, " the voracious 
sucker in human shape, who draws the life out of fair vir- 
gins whilst they sleep, is repeatedly slain ; but in dying 
he always makes a pathetic request to have his corpse put 
at some certain place, — a place where the moonlight will, 
he knows, fall upon it. Whenever the moonlight touches 
this Vampyre in human shape, he revives. Now, this 
moonshine — which is a compromise between night and 
day — is a fair symbol of that which never fails to resus- 
citate Democracy. No matter how dead you may fancy it, 
you have only to heed its last dying request for a com- 
promise, and under that moonshine its resuscitation is in- 
evitable. 

The very delay in dealing with Slavery has furnished 
sufficient moonshine, not to say lunacy, to stir the Vampyre 
with a throb of life. That party is preparing to go before 
the people in the forthcoming campaign. They will take the 
Van Wyck report in one hand, and the Washburne re- 
port in the other (for they know how to make the truth 
lie like the Devil!), and they will say, from every stump in 
the country: " Feller citizens ! What did you git by leav- 
ing the old Dimocratic party ? Fust, you got a civil war, 
plunging into fraternal fratricide the country that under 



A POSSIBLE BABYLON 135 

Frank Pierce and Jim Buckhannon was peaceful, united, 
gellorious, and happy. Second, you got untold millions of 
debt. Third, you got corruption enough in all the branches 
of the government to fill these here two thousand pages of 
investigating reports. That 's what you got by this Eepubli- 
can freak of yours ! Feller citizens, do you want to see the 
bloody clouds of civil war roll away before the rising sun 
of harmony and union, one and inseparable, now and for- 
ever? Jest vote for the regular nominees of the Dimo- 
cratic party ! Now, boys, three cheers for McClellan ! " 

I fear the appeal will be successful ; and if so, the little 
finger of the man so elected will be heavier than Buch- 
anan's loins. 

The other day I was reading in the Satanic Press the 
programme of the Democracy, of which the above is a 
free translation, and its editorial concluded with saying : 
"To this appeal the masses will be sure to respond." 
By a typographical error, or the correction of some shrewd 
printer, the m got off of masses^ and on to the preceding 
word ; and so it read " them asses will be sure to respond." 
It was very bad grammar, but I think I never read so 
sensible a sentence in that paper before. It is not the 
masses, but them asses, that we have to fear. 

Let us not trust the sham Democracy of this country 
because it now professes to support the war. The other 
evening, when, at a Democratic meeting in Cincinnati, the 
corpse of the Vampyre was stirred, the assembly gave 
vent to the natural disgust by simultaneously ejaculating, 
Fughf 

Much to our surprise, an individual whose name is so 
pronounced, supposing himself called upon, made a speech. 
The Hon. George E. Pugh is the ablest Democrat in the 
West, and would so stand with his party if he were not a 



136 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

trifle too rash. When traitors in the West propose to aid 
the rebellion, they first inquire if Lawyer Pugh is in good 
health; and in so many cases of this kind has he ap- 
peared, that it is not strange if he should be in party 
limbo. But since Garrett Davis menaced the government 
with resistance from Kentucky, the sham Democracy of 
the West has come far enough out to lay hold upon Pugh. 

At the assembly of Resurrectionists to which I have 
referred, this ex-Senator said these words: — 

"The Democracy has voted men and money to sup- 
port this government during the war; and the reason 
why they have done so is that they have intended to have 
that government in their own hands at the next adminis- 
tration. In my opinion the government will soon be in 
the hands of the Democracy, and then, and not till then^ 
will the old flag, with its thirty-four stars, represent a 
perfect Union." 

That is, the Democracy, though not regarding the 
government, under a constitutionally elected Republican 
administration, as a honafide affair, will yet support it so 
long as there lingers with them a hope of binding the 
Union as a dead Hector to the chariot of Slavery. 

" You aristocrats," says a Jacobin in Paris, " are fright- 
ened, as you say, lest we should injure your property: we 
shall guard your property with the utmost care, in the 
full expectation that it is soon to be our own." 

But the proprietors knew that behind each of these 
words was a sword and a torch, and that, when it became 
certain that the Jacobin could not get the property, his 
sword and torch would appear. 

The people are to be reverenced, but cautiously. When 
you can get a real people, their voice is the voice of God ; 



A POSSIBLE BABYLON 137 

nay, when they are animated with a great, all-compelling pur- 
pose, they are the myriad-fingered hand of God, fashioning 
the Earth according to the pattern shown in the mount. 

But from this height there is a precipitous descent. 
The people may be demoralized; then they are not a 
people, but merely the rabble. Fearfully easy and swift 
is this recoil sometimes. To-day they sing Hosanna, 
and spread their garments in the path before the advance 
of the Highest; to-morrow the same voices sharply cry, 
Crucify him ! 

This Vampyre whom they would elect would fasten 
upon this nation, and suck every free and noble drop out 
of its heart. The sacred guaranties of Liberty and forms 
of law would be suspended then, not for the defence of 
Freedom, but to crush out the soul of Freedom. Slavery 
would be the tyrant, and dungeons would be filled with 
those who uttered a word or did aught against Slavery. 
Those weapons of martial law, far more fearful than 
any artillery, may each be wheeled around against the 
champions of Freedom ; and there are men not very far 
from a possible Presidency who would use them all to 
strangle free thought and free speech in this country. 

The Babylon whose captivity we have to fear is not 
Disunion ; if that were the alternative, it would not be 
so fearful. But there are too many indications that the 
people of the North so worship the Union, and regard 
their trade as so involved in it, that, if they cannot win 
it by fair means, they will by foul. There is no doubt but 
they will fight and suffer long and gallantly to recover 
the Union ; but when it is decided that they cannot have 
it with honour, it is to be feared that they can be demoral- 
ized enough to pay the price of their honour, to compromise 
for it. 



138 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

But this would only be a thorny, crooked way to the 
same goal, the straight way to which God opens before 
us to-day. It would not be long before the very men who 
now think that they would be willing to have the Union 
with Slavery in it back again, would shriek out Anathema 
Maranatha upon every man who had a hand in such a 
result. 

XVII 

THE DIAL OF GROWTHS 

In the Palais-Royal Gardens at Paris there is a dial, with 
a small cannon attached. When the sun rises to the 
meridian height, the cannon is fired, a sun-glass having 
been so arranged as to concentrate the rays for that 
purpose. 

Not far from this is another dial, arranged on the same 
principle with the celebrated one made by Linnaeus at 
Upsal: flowers there are which close, and others which 
unfold, at various periods of the day, and thus the hours 
are marked. 

Thus the same sun which in one spot announces its 
ascent to the zenith by the cannon's roar, in another 
noiselessly traces its progress and culmination by the 
closing up of old and the unfolding of new growths. 

Ideas, sun-like, have also their dawn, their ascent, 
and their culmination. One world lies about us where 
ideas proclaim their advance through the grim mouth of 
the cannon. Powers, parties, interests have so set their 
glasses that fiery Liberty, vivifying Equality, radiant 
Fraternity, rising, dawn over dawn, upon the world, are 
responded to by the roar of battle. But softly about us 
lies another world, in which advancing Truth traces its 



THE DIAL OF GROWTHS 139 

steps of light in the closing up of old errors and the 
unfolding of new truths. 

From the noisy thunders of the cannon-dial, — from 
the din of the voices which cry, Lo here ! Lo there ! — 
let us turn for a while, and trace so far as we can the 
hour as it stands in that kingdom which cometh not with 
outward show. 

The leaders and masses enlisted in the Southern re- 
bellion have no more to do with that rebellion than the 
fantoccini of a puppet-show have to do with their own 
attitudes and dances. 

The present attitude of Slavery is the direct and in- 
evitable result of the attitude of Liberty. The Satanic 
press throughout the country implores that the anti- 
slavery agitators shall be sent to Fort Warren ; Parson 
Brownlow wishes to bury them in a ditch ; the allegation 
being that they have caused the rebellion, and are making 
a union after the old pattern impossible. Now, this is 
about as far as the Devil ever sees. He is shrewd enough 
up to a certain limit ; after that he is as blind as a bat. 
It is as certainly true that anti-slavery agitation caused this 
rebellion as that Slavery caused that agitation. It were 
easy to name one hundred brains which have been set 
a-thinking in this country during this generation, and to 
say with truth, if God had only seen fit to keep these 
hundred brains out of the world, or to have consulted 
Kentucky as to how he should fashion them, there would 
have been no war now. We should have gone on enjoying 
our country, our cotton, sugar, and the rest, as happy a 
nation of maggots as ever swarmed in an old cheese. 

In the eyes of those who have a doubt whether that 
kind of life constitutes the whole duty and chief end of 



140 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

man, the Abolitionists can desire no fairer laurel for 
their brows than that through them streamed such fiery 
rays of Liberty, that Slavery had no choice but to close 
up like a deadly flower before unfolding Justice, or else 
respond to these noonday fires with the cannon. The 
" Eebellion Record " reports that the first gun of this war 
was fired last year at Charleston : the Muse of History 
will write that the first gun was fired by William Lloyd 
Garrison in Baltimore, many years ago; the shell he 
touched off was a long time on its way, and only lately 
exploded in the election of President Lincoln, who was 
sent to Washington as an idea, and who has been, and 
will be, treated by the South as an idea. That election 
was an act of war upon Slavery ^ — all the more formid- 
able because constitutional. 

It is only in crystals that one sees plainly any mingled 
substance which is inferior. You cannot see a speck of 
dirt in the heart of a pebble, but you can see it clearly in 
the heart of a pure crystal. It is so with the evil at the 
heart of this country. The wrongs which for ages lay un- 
observed in the stony heart of absolutism, preserved now 
in the centre of a republic, discolour all the rays shining 
through it. Our faith and courage in these times will be 
in proportion to our realization of the fact that our 
trouble, though it should end in failure, is a sign not of 
weakness so much as of strength. Were the age meaner, 
its claim would not be, as it is now, beyond the ordinary 
satisfaction of circumstances. Had the evils which afflict 
us a tongue, it would say : " Surely you have grown very 
sophisticated and fastidious. Read your school histories 
over again, and see what age was exempt from injustice 
and violence, war and Slavery. Are you not making in 
this generation a great deal of noise over evils that your 



THE DIAL OF GROWTHS 141 

ancestors sat very quietly under?'* Certainly we are. 
We stand upon our vantage as proudly as did the young 
Goethe, of whom it is related that, when six years old, he 
plagued his mother with questions as to whether the stars 
would perform for him all that, according to some fortune- 
teller, they had promised at his birth. " Why," said his 
mother, " must you have the assistance of the stars, when 
other people get on very well without ? " To this the 
terrible child replied : " But I am not to be satisfied with 
what does for other people." So the humblest man in 
Christendom to-day puts his foot upon such a government 
as Jesus and Paul rested quietly under ; so the poorest 
American is too high to be satisfied with what suits an 
Austrian. Centuries of rain and sunshine are not wasted 
on the vineyard of God, where nations of men climb to 
clusters. Therefore, although the country was never so dis- 
turbed before in its immediate interests, it was never 
higher than now. This sundering of a great Confederacy, 
— this panic fallen upon all our material interests. — 
this division of the large church bodies, — all testify 
gloriously how large a price a young nation is willing to 
pay for a principle. Never more fitly could it be called a 
chosen people of God than now, when it says, "Yes, we 
are ready to press out even into a forty-years wilderness, 
following the guiding pillar of Liberty, whether it turn to 
us its fiery or its clouded side ! " 

The cannon's roar to-day, then, proclaims Liberty ra- 
diant in the heavens. America is assailed only because 
she has turned from Slavery, and pressed forward to touch 
the vesture's hem of Freedom. That was her only crime. 
Then let the prophets be stoned ; let those who proclaim 
that the axe must and shall be laid to the root of the tree 
be slain, and the head of Radicalism be brought on a 



142 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

charger to the Herodias of Democracy ! When the Voice 
in the Wilderness is hushed, the Voice in Jerusalem breaks 
out. 

Here, then, in our Dial of Growths, is the first hour 
traced, — the nightshade of a fatal and ignoble peace in 
the midst of crime closes. Far nobler this blood-red flower 
of war ! 

Again, I see fast closing beneath the glow that old athe- 
ism which has fancied that this world was not governed 
by the laws of God. It was said by Mr. Gladstone, that 
" the king of Sicily had reduced atheism to a system of 
government." That king might certainly, at any time in 
the last twenty years, have sued the United States govern- 
ment for an infraction of his patent. 

And the government was so because the people were 
so. Would a people ever dream of disregarding habitually 
laws in which they had faith as involving interests of life 
and death ? Would they eat poisons, launch ships with- 
out compasses, leap over precipices? That is just what 
we have been doing in the real world, — the world where 
gravitation takes the form of justice. And now comes the 
severe experience which shows us that the Golden Rule 
is not only a moral but a physical law ; that these invisible 
laws which are called moral are not abstractions, the viola- 
tions of which are to end in a grand scenic display of 
Zamiel with red lights in the future world, but laws which 
encircle the world above and below, and govern it infal- 
libly in every instant ; and that no wrong is without its 
penalty on the moment. Our nation's crime is to-day its 
own retribution ; the stain on our flag has become a plague- 
spot on the body. And upon those in our land who most 
abetted the wrong the retribution is heaviest. 

There were sundry atheistic institutions in our land, 



THE DIAL OF GROWTHS 143 

calling themselves Tract and Missionary Societies ; these, * 
simply for lucre and worldly strength, refused to listen to 
the cries or sobs of four millions of their brethren, — con- 
sented that they should be sold into Egypt. Now come 
the great hails which sweep away the refuges of lies ; and 
these very societies and churches which most failed to res- 
cue those torn and bleeding sheep of Christ's fold are the 
most sundered and ruined. They laid up their treasures 
where Confederates break through and steal. The most 
flourishing societies and churches now are those which 
rebuked slavery too sternly to have any possessions in the 
South to be lost. 

Trade has also learned its lesson. We had, in the times 
of Henry Clay, memorials, circulated through the North, 
praying Congress to have the discussion of Slavery in its 
halls suppressed. They were signed principally by mer- 
chants with large Southern trade. In some cities, however, 
there were found merchants who would not sign away 
their independence for Southern custom. These the pro- 
slavery papers were swift in parading as the enemies of 
the South, and they suffered by the withdrawal of South- 
ern custom. The South dealt more largely than ever with 
its " friends." The others had to reorganize their trade ; 
forced to plant their business entirely in the North, those 
firms are to-day secure ; they have no dreary account of 
irrecoverable thousands with Southern dealers. Of all 
such customers they were long ago relieved by their com- 
pliant neighbours, now groaning under the sequestration 
of their property in the South. 

And we may rest assured that all who have woven into 
their lives and interests rotten and blood-rusted threads, 
will now see the tissue torn to tatters under the blasts 
which attend this judgment day. 



144 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

Atheism, then, — the disbelief in the reality of Divine 
laws, — can never again rule in church and trade : they 
will believe, though for a while it will be only to " be- 
lieve and tremble." 

Let us hope also that the day has advanced enough to 
close up that old poisonous blossom Compromise^ and 
that the new hour is opening Truth, Ah, how have we 
needed the snow-white petals of this flower, in place of 
that compliant trailing weed ! 

A lion on a plain was taunted by a serpent, which was 
on a high, steep rock, with his inability to climb to an 
equal height. The lion answered, " I might like you have 
risen, if like you I had crawled." What was all this pros- 
perity, this wealth, this spread-eagle nationality ; the first 
untainted breath sent through the Capitol showed that 
it was all a crawling prosperity. And so, thank God, the 
heel of our manhood is near the head of that serpent 
whose trail was through church and 'change and court and 
government. 

In establishing the government, our fathers compro- 
mised ; to-day we reap the harvest of that seed ; and to-day 
the people are reading the law that those who begin with 
the compromise of principle have given themselves to the 
toils of a glittering, bright-eyed, golden-scaled serpent, 
which must inevitably crush them at last. See before you, 
Americans, the consequences of a compromise proposed 
and accepted ! 

Now let us turn into the past, and consider an instance 
of another kind ; an instance of a compromise proposed 
and rejected, and the consequences of the same. Here is 
the compromise proposed : — 

" The Devil taketh him into an exceeding high moun- 
tain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world and 



THE DIAL OF GROWTHS 145 

the glory of them ; and saith unto him, All these things 
will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." 
And here is the compromise rejected: — 
*' Then said Jesus, Get thee behind me, Satan." 
And, finally, here are the consequences : — 
" Then the Devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came 
and ministered unto him." 

May we not even call this the Messiah of nations, as it 
stands out in the wilderness, hungry as ever for wealth 
and plenty, but obeying the spirit which leads it to the 
trial of its faith in justice and liberty ? 

This is no metaphor ; it is a momentous reality. Amer- 
ica is to-day in the wilderness of temptation, and beside 
her is the Tempter. 

Up into the mountain the Tempter leads, — the exceed- 
ing high mountain of our national greatness and pride. 
From that apex, ready to crumble under our feet, how 
keenly the kingdoms of this world and their glories strike 
the senses ! On one side, the kingdom of political unity ; 
on another,*the kingdom of cotton ; near by, the realms of 
trade; and there, the kingdom of ecclesiastical power. 
The Tempter never slumbers so long as God is awake. 
" What is it," he whispers, " that divides your nation ? 
what is it that prevents cotton from crystallizing to dia- 
monds for your treasury ? what is it that hangs the auc- 
tion flag from the windows of trade? what is it that 
sunders every church ? It is your hatred of African Slav- 
ery. It is your love of freedom. Only give over these, — 
only consent to the fetter on the limbs of the black man, 
— and see, all these kingdoms are yours, with all their 
glories ! See, the nation is one again ; the coffer is full. 
The Church's wounds are healed so soon as Northern and 
Southern Christians consent to kneel around a common 



146 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

altar, there to eat the broken body and drink the shed 
blood of the African race. All these shall be yours, says 
the Tempter, if only ye will turn from the shrine of Lib- 
erty and worship Slavery ; and you may call your idol 
patriotism, union, concession, compromise, fraternal feel- 
ing, peace, or any other fine name you please." 

Never before was the Compromise devil foiled in this 
country. Let that be forever named " an exceeding high 
mountain," where the people confront the Tempter with- 
out kneeling, where not one man dear to the people is 
heard saying, This be thy god, O America ! 

But, side by side, there are yet growing two blood- 
stained growths, with petals full blown ; they are Slavery 
and War : near them two fair white buds, whose names 
are Liberty and Peace. Comrades, faint not, but watch 
and labour and wait, that those flame-leaved, sickening 
blossoms may close, as they must, together; and in that 
moment unfolding, these snowy, healing ones shall record 
that it is Freedom's noontide. 

XVIII 

THE GOLDEN HOUR 

Theke is an Oriental legend which relates that a poor 
man sat a thousand years before the gates of Paradise ; 
then, in his weariness, he snatched one hour's sleep. But 
in that hour the gates of pearl swung open, and the poor 
man awoke just in time to see them close. 

Long has this country been sitting in dust and rags 
before the barred gates of Liberation from the curse 
which is upon her. In our midst reigned the infernal in- 
stitution which seemed to preserve the deadliest blood- 



THE GOLDEN HOUR 147 

drops of all the tyrants the world ever saw. It crushed 
all heart and hope out of the black man ; it laid waste his 
home, and made the earth for him a great devil's master- 
piece ; but it could not so wrong him as it has wronged 
the white man. From the white man it took the very 
marrow of honour. It has made it a, lifelong battle to be a 
gentleman in this country, Slavery insisting that one shall 
be a coward and a Negro-hound. O God ! to see our Presi- 
dent's own State wallowing in the very sewers of Slavery 
with its black laws, until one longs for some Toussaint to 
scourge Illinois of black hearts, and fill it with black 
faces! To see Ohio, ruled by the vermin who tremble to 
take a Confederate officer's slave or sword in her own 
capital, stoning any man of common sense and common 
honesty who would have her go a step beyond pork and 
whiskey! To see this institution, after treading under its 
feet the millions of black bodies and the souls of whites in 
the South, marching on through the North, its brass 
collar on the necks of five Representatives of Massachu- 
setts, — a Republican Cabinet afraid to look it in the eye! 
Alas! it is not four, but nearer twenty-four, millions of 
slaves we have in America, 

But now has the Golden Hour come, and with a song 
from every angel, a shriek from every demon, the pearly 
portals of Liberation are prized open by Slavery's own 
madness, and America is invited to enter the blessed 
land. 

Last year Republicans had to be technical and skilful 
in proving even a probability that at the bottom of the 
ballot-box a gateway of release would ever be found; 
to-day it requires all the ingenuity of the Cabinet engi- 
neers not to free us. Their great problem now is how not 
to do it. 



148 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

How long have the opponents of this nation's crime 
been met with the complaint that they were trying to 
hurry God? "Cannot you let Providence do its own 
work?" "Providence will do away with the evil in its 
own good time." 

To all of which, not without a suspicion of its hypo- 
crisy, the anti-slavery man could only reply, with Luther, 
" God is a good worker, but loves to be helped." 

But now, if ever "providential hour" and "God's own 
good time " meant anything, they are here. The hour has 
arrived when Slavery comes outside of constitutional and 
legal intrenchments, and makes its death the alternative 
of the death of the nation. The hour has come when the 
lives of our best and bravest, and the bread of the poor 
are dependent on its overthrow. The hour has come when 
for the first time we have an army gathered sufficient in 
numbers and appointments to secure us infallibly against 
those fancied dangers which have been held up to affright 
the timid, as following in the train of emancipation. 

But where are all our Providentialists ? Where are 
those who bade us await God's own good time? O ye 
resigned ones, who so piously suppressed your enthu- 
siasm for freedom lest you should upset God's plans, do 
not all speak at once! 

How does God's " own good time " passing over our 
heads find us? Behold, the Bridegroom cometh. At the 
altar of Justice, Liberty would wed America. Where are 
the lamps, filled, trimmed, and ready ? Foolish virgins, 
whilst ye go to buy, the door shall be shut ! What avails 
all our toiling, suffering, pleading, — what avails the red- 
dened soil of Kansas, what the blood of the martyrs, 
— if now the golden portal of opportunity to which these 
have brought us shall be shut in our faces ? 



THE GOLDEN HOUR 149 

An old journal had this singular advertisement in the 
column of "Losses": — 

" Lost. — Yesterday^ somewhere between sunrise and 
sunset^ a Golden Hour^ set with sixty diamond minutes.** 

No reward was offered, doubtless because the loser 
knew that the priceless jewel was gone forever. 

Golden is every hour; but there are periods when mo- 
ments are hours, and hours years, and years ages. Who 
can appraise the hours which arrive, one by one, Sibyl- 
like, each proffering the sacred volumes in which the vic- 
torious destiny of a Free Republic is written? Who can 
hear the full mournfulness of the word "Lost," but they 
who know that, as each hour departs, it goes to burn an- 
other of those volumes? Meanwhile, the steadfast oracle 
proclaims that, when the last hour which gives us the op- 
portunity of emancipation passes, the doom of this Union 
is sealed. 

Not one hour passes over this nation, but in it — in 
that one hour — the nightmare of ages might be hurled 
from its breast. This hour a decree that henceforth the 
United States ignores utterly the relation of master and 
slave paralyzes, as by the voice of a god, every arm up- 
lifted against the country, and, which is far better, saves 
it from its own blindness here on the precipice's verge. 
The Sibyl Opportunity has not yet left the slave forever; 
his eyes strain toward the hope which has not yet set; 
anon he has sent up his signals of flame to see if the army 
of the North is his friend or enemy. But the slave knows, 
and we know, that his status in this struggle must soon 
be settled ; nay, in some points it is already settled, and 
he stands the armed foe of the United States. As soon as 
it is determined that this is not his Golden Hour, he 
chooses between two foes ; and why should he not choose 



150 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

the side of those who represent the evil he knows, over 
those representative of the evils he knows not of ? Why- 
should he fly to those who esteem his rights beneath the 
rights of traitors, thieves, and assassins? Why should he 
select those who can do him no harm where he is, in pre- 
ference to those who may still hold power over his wife 
and child and parent? 

The Golden Hour will not wait on us to the measure 
of our own moral cowardice. " We should not be in haste 
to determine that radical measures are necessary," says 
the President. True, but we should be as much without 
rest as without haste, for no hour will bear to have its 
task put off upon another hour. The present hour offers 
us a peaceful victory through emancipation. The next 
may offer us only victory by that means. The third may 
offer us a costly victory, provided we can provide arms 
for the slaves. The fourth may make it as difficult to do 
this as it is now to furnish arms to the loyal men of East 
Tennessee. The fifth may sweep away our advantages 
altogether, and our Golden Hour, crossed by a scythe, 
become a symbol on our nation's grave. 

Our President and legislators talk of this advantage — 
our only advantage, mark — of using liberty to save the 
country, as if Time was in their pay. Time is in the pay of 
those who take him by the forelock : he is all bald behind. 

When the commanding general at Washington an- 
nounced that every soldier found guilty of sleeping on 
duty should be shot, some of us were alarmed by an ap- 
prehension that he would have to begin at the head of 
the army, and shoot all, down to the drummer-boy. So far 
as the country knew, the whole Army of the Potomac was 
fast asleep. 



THE GOLDEN HOUR 151 

There is in history no other instance of an army within 
sight of an enemy sleeping away seasons so fair. Why 
was that strange hesitancy? "The army must be reor- 
ganized": we waited until it had passed its maximum of 
organization, and began to decline. "The rivers are too 
highly swollen " : we stood still until they had subsided. 
"The roads are utterly impassable for artillery": we 
waited until they were dry. "When the leaves fall": the 
last leaf fell. " An attack from the enemy is momentarily 
expected": we waited, and it came not. "Secretary Deep- 
diver remarked to-day, in conversation with a gentleman, 
that the country would be gratified by stirring news in 
ten days " : twenty pass, and not a stir. 

The nation arraigned this slumber of their military 
energies, and has awaited the plea of its commanders. 
Thoughtless nation, your commanders had a very suf- 
ficient plea. They slept because the nation slept. Their 
eyes were heavy because atmospheric conditions cannot 
be resisted. A certain black drug, infused into the atmos- 
phere of this country, has made open eyes sectional, and 
Sleepy Hollow national ; and, as Rip Van Winkle shouted 
for King George before the astonished subjects of the 
United States, the graduates of a certain institution, un- 
doubtedly built on the verge of Sleepy Hollow, have not 
yet heard that we are no longer colonies of the South 
and subjects of Slavery. 

General McClellan occupied his position at the head 
of the United States forces, not because he had lived or 
served up to that position, — for several silly proclama- 
tions in Western Virginia, the Potomac blockade, and 
Ball's Bluff were all on his record, and not one great 
deed, — but simply because, when his superiors snored, 
he was not so disrespectful as to keep awake. He is not 



152 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

a large man, neither is lie a fool; and he could peep 
through his eyelids enough to see what befell such wake- 
ful spirits as Fremont and Lane. General McClellan was 
not and is not a traitor ; but in this war every pro-slavery 
heart is, whether consciously or not, a partially disloyal 
heart, because it cannot possibly be awake to the real 
forces in this conflict. It was fixed in his mind that no 
person who should slay many Southerners could fail to 
exasperate the South, and both sections would never unite 
sweetly upon any such man. 

It would have been impossible for McClellan to have 
remained commander during that long inaction, if the 
people had not been in a rusty, sleepy transition state : 
when they first sat up in bed, they called for some such 
man as Stanton; for the President is the faithful tongue 
of the people's wishes, however poorly he may supply their 
wants. 

Well, in a military sense we have waked up ; but in deal- 
ing intelligently and directly with the cause and support 
of the Rebellion we are repeating the McClellan slumber 
over again. In this higher army than the military, it would 
be a formidable order to have all the sentinels who sleep 
at their posts shot. 

There is our honoured President, for example, none can 
doubt that he is wide awake before the portal of Military 
Opportunity; but before the open door by which our nation 
may pass onward to liberation from all that makes war 
possible, he gives scarcely a sign. It is evident that the 
worthy President would like to have God on his side: he 
must have Kentucky. 

In all this the nation hears only the echo of its own loud 
snore. What are leaders to do when, at a time when 
the very existence of the nation is threatened, they hear 



THE GOLDEN HOUR 153 

sensible men asking old cant questions about the Negroes, 
and what to do with them? 

Is the Negro descended from the same original pair with 
the Caucasian? For what is the use of our nation's being 
saved, if it is not ethnologically saved? 

Will not the Negro steal our silver spoons? How dreary 
were a spoonless nationality ! (A happy thought ! We can 
employ Floyd or some other Caucasian as a missionary to 
inculcate honesty to Negroes.) 

What is meant in the Scriptures by " Cursed be 
Canaan"? For, of course, national existence is nothing if 
not exegetical? 

Again, what is the origin of evil? For is not death bet- 
ter than unteleological life? 

That we should be spending three millions a day, and 
our men perishing by thousands, whilst we discuss the des- 
tiny and capacity of the Negro, reminds one of the posi- 
tion taken by Anacharsis Clootz in the French Assembly, 
"that the Democratic principle was of such importance, 
that it would be cheaply purchased by the total destruc- 
tion of the human race from the face of the planet " ! 

What shall be done with the Negro, forsooth! Can 
we do any worse with him than we have done, and are 
doing ? Can he be any heavier burden to us than now, 
when he is the fulcrum on which turns every lever set to 
overthrow our liberties and lives? May we not respect- 
fully submit that it is about as much as we can attend 
to, to take care of Society in 1862, without adjusting the 
social relations and conditions of 1962 ? May it not be 
surmised that the future will have brains to attend to its 
own affairs ? May we not suggest, also, that, having once 
decided what we would "do with the Negro," Almighty 
God does n't seem to have been over pleased at our dis- 



154 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

posal of him in that instance, and seems very likely to 
have a share in any future disposal of him ? 

Accuse not thy generals, O American nation! Thou 
art the drugged sleeper. Before thee with thy heavy- 
eyed millions. Liberty, in sight of the swords and staves 
of avowed foes and seeming friends, which threaten its 
life, stands appealing, " Couldst thou not watch with me 
one hour ? " It may be that Liberty shall have to say 
presently to the slumbering sentinels, " Sleep on now : 
my hour is come " ; — and must needs pass to its resur- 
rection through the dark portal of her chosen nation's 
grave. 

XIX 

THE NEGRO 

Montesquieu said that it would not do to suppose that 
Negroes were men, lest it should turn out that whites 
were not. 

The sarcasm falls almost exclusively upon this country, 
where alone the indecent nonsense concerning the nature 
of the Negro survives. In 1781, in the case of the ship 
Zong, whose master had thrown one hundred and thirty- 
two slaves alive into the sea to cheat the underwriters, 
the first jury gave a verdict in favour of the master and 
owners : they had a right to do what they had done. Lord 
Mansfield is reported to have said on the bench : " The 
matter left to the jury is, Was it from necessity? For 
they had no doubt — though it shocks one very much — 
that the case of slaves was the same as if horses had been 
thrown overboard." Such was the Negro in the eye of the 
law when Sharpe and Clarkson began their efforts. The 
latter of these, early in his career, made a collection of 



THE NEGRO 155 

African productions and manufactures, as Indications of 
what the Negro, despite all disparagements, had attained. 
They were considered remarkable by some of the best 
judges in England. Mr. Pitt was especially interested in 
them. " On sight of these," says Clarkson, " many sublime 
thoughts seemed to rush at once into his mind, some of 
which he expressed." From this time the project, which 
was always dear to him, of the civilization of Africa arose 
in his mind. A half-century of healthy development 
brought England to its senses as regards the Negro. 

Since then the Negro has lived to prove that those who 
are counting upon perpetual degradation and final exter- 
mination as his destiny are running against the grain of 
things. He has shown a vitality equal to that of the white 
race where both are out of their native climates; and 
where the white man has been vindicating his claim to 
superiority only by enslaving him, — empowered to do so 
by having armed nations behind him, — the Negro has 
shown himself easily superior to his master. This he has 
always proved as soon as the outside pressure of law and 
force was removed, and a fair trial of strength between 
him and his master permitted. He has become the domi- 
nant race in the West Indies ; he has superseded the 
white man in Haiti altogether ; and the unanimous ver- 
dict of our soldiers now in the South is that the Negro is 
the superior race in that section of America. Of the eight 
millions of whites in the Slave States, six are " poor white 
trash," and no one who has seen them can compare them 
to the black labourers there. And when it comes to upper 
classes, it is not easy to decide that Jeff Davis's coach- 
man is better fitted to be the slave than the master of 
Jeff, or that Eobert Small is not equal to Pickens, Floyd, 
or any of their set. 



156 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

At Monticello the exquisite mosaic floor, made by one 
of Mr. Jefferson's slaves, is yet in good preservation. The 
old friend of that statesman who showed it to me said : 
" Mr. Jefferson always took pleasure in showing his vis- 
itors this exquisite piece of workmanship. It was made by 
one of his slaves, born on his estate, who never had any 
instruction as a mechanic. Mr. Jefferson always believed 
that the Negro race had a destiny." 

There is the important fact ; there lies the Enceladus 
under this volcano, — the Negro has an important destiny 
to fulfil in human society. Our laws and plans have been 
arranged with reference to another theory: we had as- 
sumed his moral and political non-existence, and in so 
doing we have gone, day by day, more and more against 
the eternal fact. And unless we speedily have that lie 
which this nation has actively credited purged out of it, it 
will drag us into the abyss prepared for lies from before 
the foundation of the world. Elwood Fisher has prepared 
for this nation an epitaph which runs : " Here lies a people 
who lost their own liberty in trying to give freedom to the 
Negro." The hope is too high for us to indulge, that this 
nation can thus become the dying Saviour among the na- 
tions ! If the nation should perish, history would engrave 
on its tomb, " Here lies a people who lost their own liberty 
in trying to pursue through a Red Sea those for whose 
liberty God had parted the waves." 

The worst symptom in the case of America is the preju- 
dice against the Negro, — a disease which always has 
called for fearful cauterization. What is in refined society 
unmitigated vulgarity is in this country considered ele- 
gance. A few years ago President Roberts of Liberia was 
returning from America through England. The captain 
of the steamship would not allow this cultivated and dis- 



THE NEGRO 157 

tinguished gentleman to sit at table with the white pas- 
sengers ; and persisted in his refusal, even after a majority 
of the whites had requested otherwise. A day after their 
arrival in England, Mr. Roberts, having some business 
with the captain, repaired to the steamship, and found him 
in the presence of many of the passengers who had wit- 
nessed his treatment on board. On being addressed, the 
captain said to President Roberts, " Come down this even- 
ing at eight o'clock, and I will attend to you." "At that 
hour," replied Roberts, " I am engaged to dine with the 
Queen of England." The confused captain named another 
hour, amidst the explosive laughter of the company. This 
Negro, so offensive to the steamboat aristocracy of Amer- 
ica, is received as diplomatic minister in every other gov- 
ernment of Christendom, and at Rome the African bishop 
stands besides the whitest who in America may be helping 
to enslave his race. Is there wonder that in many parts 
of Europe " American " should be synonymous with " vul- 
gar"? 

It has been whispered that Haiti will appoint a white 
man to act for that country at Washington. I cannot 
believe that the President of Haiti could so far degrade 
his country before the world as to make such an appoint- 
ment ; but if there are any such influences at work, it 
behooves every friend of freedom to protest loudly and 
strongly against it. If Haiti cannot be represented here 
by her blackest Negro, let her be unrepresented; this 
nation already perceives that we need her more than she 
needs us. But more than all the fruits, spices, and wealth 
she can bring us, we need her black minister in Washing- 
ton. We need him there as the touchstone of our civiliza- 
tion ; we need him as the magic mantle to reveal every 
sham and every impurity in the Republican Court. 



158 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

I esteem, says Emerson, " the occasion of this jubilee 
(West Indian Emancipation) to be the proud discovery 
that the black race can contend with the white ; that, in 
the great anthem which we call History, a piece of many 
parts and vast compass, after playing a long time a very 
low and subdued accompaniment, they perceive the time 
arrived when they can strike in with effect, and take a 
master's part in the music. The civility of the world has 
reached that pitch, that their more moral genius is be- 
coming indispensable, and the quality of this race is to be 
honoured for itself. For this they have been preserved in 
sandy deserts, in rice swamps, in kitchens and shoe-shops, 
so long ; now let them emerge, clothed and in their own 
form." 

No danger from the Southern Confederacy threatens 
us so much as this cry of our rulers for the colonization 
of freed Negroes. A million square miles of untilled lands 
to which their sinews are by the laws of Nature conse- 
crated are clamouring for them, and yet madmen in power 
are talking of exiling them ! Haiti, Liberia, and now the 
Danish government are all intriguing to get these labourers 
from us; and nothing but the resolution of the Negroes, 
that they will not go unless forced, saves us from this 
fearful loss. America will one day kneel, and thank that 
people that they held out against the stupidity and igno- 
rance of the colonizationists, whose project would blight 
one half of our territory. If, by any unfortunate means, 
America shall be robbed of this race, posterity will know 
the President under whom the exodus occurs only by the 
name of Fool, 

What are we to do with the Negro ? Is the Anglo-Saxon 
brain on this hemisphere softening ? If so, some day in 
the midst of wasted fields and desolate lands we may be 



TO THE PRESIDENT 159 

burdened with the question, What can we do without 
him? 

No ! this race is to remain with us ; it has brought from 
the remote past and fervid East a sacred stream of vitality, 
by it alone now represented upon earth, which it is ap- 
pointed to mingle with the current of humanity, and with- 
out which man in the New World could never fill out the 
outlines sketched for him by the Supreme Artist. 

XX 

TO THE PRESIDENT OP THE UNITED STATES 

Honoured Sir : Passing homeward one night, about three 
years ago, I encountered a large crowd, who were listen- 
ing to some speaker. A crowd in the market space of our 
Queen City was nothing unusual, and I was thinking only 
how to open my way through it, when, in clear, earnest 
tones, these words fell upon my ear : " I am satisfied that 
the only just and effectual method of dealing with Slavery 
is that which shall always recognize and deal with it as 
wrong, ^^ 

In a moment I turned, and remained for over an hour 
to hear a powerful statement of which that sentence was 
the keynote. The next time I saw that speaker it was as 
he passed along the same street, amid the ovations of the 
people who had helped to elect him as a President who 
should deal with slavery as a great wrong, — how great 
they did not then know, or much more than surmise. 

Since that day. Sir, in which the sight of a duly-elected 
honest, anti-slavery President filled our eyes with happy 
tears, this country has seen nothing which does not indicate 
that you mean to deal with the accursed thing as wrong. 

Though your administration had been proved to have 



160 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

exhausted itself in Laving called out seventy-five thousand 
men to defend the integrity of this nation, the people 
could never have forgotten that, in doing so, you did a 
greater deed than Cortez, burning the ships of ignoble 
compromise behind us. 

But, Sir, your administration did not exhaust itself in 
that : the laurels shall never fade which twine about the 
brow of the President under whose administration Slavery 
was abolished in the District, and Haiti recognized, and 
Emancipation first proposed from the White House. 

But all these things will not save this Republic from 
dissolution. No one who has ever looked of late into your 
eye, as I have, can fail to see that every fibre of heart and 
brain in you has become identified with the rescue of this 
Union from the perils which threaten it, and that there is 
no personal sacrifice which you could not make for that end. 
Nor can any observing person fail to see that the tendency 
of your mind and action is steadily toward Emancipation ; 
whilst many, who know that in such an emergency as this 
a day is often a century, feel keenly that, not for the 
slave's sake, but for our own, we need sharp, bold, decisive, 
in a word heroic action. 

The naturalist Thoreau used to amuse us much by 
thrusting his hand into the Concord River and drawing 
out at will a fine fish, which would lie quietly in his hand : 
when we thrust in ours, the fish would scamper out of 
reach. It seemed like a miracle, until he explained to us 
that his power to take up the fish depended upon his know- 
ledge of the colour and location of the fish's eggs. The 
fish will protect its spawn ; and when Thoreau placed his 
hand underneath that, the fish, in order to protect it, 
would swim immediately over it, and the fingers had only 
to close for it to be caught. 



TO THE PRESIDENT 161 

Slavery is the spawn out of which the armed forces of 
treason and rebellion in the South have been hatched; 
and by an inviolable instinct they will rush, at any cost, 
to protect Slavery. You have only, Sir, to take Slavery 
in your grasp, then close your fingers around the rebellion. 

This I have tried to prove ; also, that the only way of 
grasping the rebellion spawn is to declare that this nation 
no longer recognizes the institution of Slavery as an exist- 
ence. This we humbly implore you to do, by the martial 
power which Slavery has compelled you to use in place 
of the normal powers of the Constitution. For, Sir, from 
the day in which Slavery became to this government an out- 
law. Liberty became, like ancient Thebes, hundred-gated. 

It is a high circumstance. Sir, whether its full bearing 
was seen by our fathers or not, that the commander-in- 
chief of our army and navy is at the same time the chief 
guardian of our national honour and political liberties ; and 
whilst a mere military general may have no higher draft 
to make upon martial power than that which will enable 
him to make this or that expedition successful, we have a 
right to claim that our President shall raise a higher 
standard of Necessity, — one including not only the pre- 
servation of our national existence, but of that security 
without military despotism, that honour without stain, 
which alone can make existence worthy of preservation. 

The air is full of noisy objections against the request 
of your petitioners for an edict of emancipation. Some of 
these remind me of the Sheik's objection to lending his 
rope. When Abul Alladin asked of him the loan of a rope, 
the Sheik said, " I need it to tie up a measure of sand." 
" Need a rope to tie up sand! " exclaimed Abul in aston- 
ishment. " O neighbour," replied the Sheik, " any reason 
will do when one does not wish to lend a thing." There is no 



162 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

use in dealing with objections which arise from the desire 
and determination to retain Slavery in this country, at any 
time ; certainly none in addressing one who has declared his 
determination to recognize and deal with it only as wrong. 

The people have witnessed with indignation how those 
who lately denounced you as a sectional candidate, because 
they saw that if you reached the White House you would 
be the President, and not Slavery, are now at Washing- 
ton, standing in the shoes yet warm from the feet of 
traitors, and, in the interest of Slavery, throwing it per- 
petually in your face that you entered the arena upon the 
platform of non-interference with Slavery in the States. 
You, Sir cannot be deceived by such twaddle ; and if you 
fear that any honest people are, I pray you to dismiss the 
misgiving. They know. Sir, that interference with Slavery 
in the States was not in your Chicago Platform ; they 
know also that the loss of twenty thousand men pursuant 
to your proclamation was not in your Chicago Platform. 
The remedy must change with the disease: the physician 
may give an appropriate medicine for measles ; but if the 
measles should presently change to smallpox, what should 
we say of a physician who should attempt to vindicate his 
consistency by giving the same medicine after the disease 
had changed ? The Chicago Platform prescribed for mea- 
sles ; but you have to treat a virulent case of smallpox, 
and the patient will not last until you can get party men 
to make a new platform. 

It is demonstrable. Sir, that in every point of view — 
constitutional, ethical, or personal — you have more right 
to kill an institution that injures man than you have to 
kill a man. Institutions at the best are the mere scaffold- 
ings about man. 

But you are assured that this measure would divide the 



TO THE PRESIDENT 163 

North. In contradiction of this, we have the lesson of a 
recent experience. One of our generals did, in the face of 
the world, take the God of Justice on his side ; he who 
had planted our banner on the highest point of land in 
America found a higher height, and planted it there, when 
he declared every slave free whom he could declare free. 
"What was the result ? Like a crystal stream from ever- 
lasting hills upon a parched and thirsty land came his 
proclamation ; the nation was filled with joy and power ; 
the young men sprang to their feet as they read it, and 
their hearts throbbed with a divine enthusiasm ; rank after 
rank poured westward, and Europe for the first and only 
time glowed with sympathy and admiration. Even the 
vilest presses which had been dragged along after our 
banner — the New York " Herald," the Boston " Courier " 
and " Post," and Cincinnati " Enquirer " — seemed to 
feel a touch of nobleness, and cried Bravo ! to the Path- 
finder as he scaled this loftier height than any sierra. All 
felt that it was our only great victory, our compensation 
for every defeat. For one noble week we were a united, 
electrified, invincible nation. Alas! since that week a 
humiliated, discontented, divided, muttering nation, we 
have been but a monument of the tremendous power of 
that invisible thing called Justice, to uplift those who aUy 
themselves therewith, and to divide and weaken those who 
"modify" her plain mandates. From that week we have 
been divided, and the only token of a return to the same 
unity appeared when our President took lately a step to- 
ward that standard of liberty which he had furled for 
reasons which seemed to him patriotic and necessary. 
And as he shall take step after step upward and onward, 
more and more will he find the North gather into a solid 
phalanx around him. 



164 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

"But our officers and soldiers would lay down their 
arms." As far as our soldiers are concerned, this is but a 
base and silly libel. The records show that enlistments 
tripled in number after Fremont's proclamation, all the 
soldiers wishing to go into his department ; and that they 
were seriously checked when that edict of freedom was 
modified. As for our generals, it would be one of the best 
things about such an edict that it might cause some of 
them to resign ; — I hope the majority would go home, 
with their friends Patterson and Stone, who have gone 
before. Who would not be glad to hear that every half- 
hearted leader had been cowed back by the determined 
front of Liberty, which he had pretended to serve whilst 
really serving Slavery ? Once, says an old fable, the cat, 
hearing that the hen was sick, went to pay her a visit. 
After condoling with the invalid, the cat said, " Really, 
I should like to serve you in any way in my power. What 
can I do for you ? " The invalid hen cast an uneasy glance 
at the yellow eyes and hungry chops of the cat, and re- 
plied, " You can do me a signal service by leaving me. 
I think if you will leave me, I shall be much better." 
Some people's room is better than their company; and 
amongst these may be reckoned those who, in a war for 
Liberty, esteem it their duty to hunt down, to crush with 
an iron hand, to refuse entrance within their lines to the 
innocent and wronged who seek their liberty also ; or who 
know so little of the old Orphic strain to which the walls 
of the universe arose as to drive from their camp the 
minstrels who sing of Liberty. 

With reference, however, to this fear of dividing the 
North or their army, we may admit that the kindling and 
spreading of such a fire would rouse up some nests of ser- 
pents in both. But those who have studied most deeply 



TO THE PRESIDENT 165 

epochs related to that through which we are now passing,* 
know how fatal has been any waiting for complete unity. 

No cause has ever kindled the enthusiasm which could 
sustain it to the end until it was elevated enough to slough 
off its baser adherents. 

No cause ever produced the heroes necessary to its 
real and final victory until it was pure enough to separate, 
as on God's threshing-floor, the chaff from the wheat. 

Our fathers of the Revolution never gained any great 
victories until the war about taxes became a war for com- 
plete independence ; but when that period came, they had 
to fight the Tories with one hand and the British with 
the other. For a long time it was difficult to say whether 
Tories or Independents were in the majority; but the 
world was given again to see that strength does not lie in 
majorities, but rather in causes so glorious that every 
man standing for them is a hundred-fold the man he 
would be fighting on the lowest plane. 

As for more division coming of the elevation of our 
cause than is implied in this weeding and winnowing of our 
ranks, a higher force enters in all such cases to prevent it. 
That higher force is Heroism, That electric battery has 
a line to every human heart. 

The demagogues do not estimate this in making their 
calculations. We had a little over a year ago governors 
of Free States declaring that any troops marching south- 
ward must fight their militia first. We had a Senator 
declaring that disunion would run a ploughshare along the 
great National Road, Mr. Lincoln resolved that he would 
stand or fall by the Republic, and answered all these pro- 
phecies with the call for an army, and lo ! instead of a 
ploughshare dividing the Northwest, instead of a fire in 
the rear, the North, which Daniel Webster said had no 



166 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

existence, rises as one man at his heroic call. The first 
touch of heroism in the government created anew this 
nation. 

Then the demagogues said, "But just touch a slave, 
and these men will lay down their arms." Fremont, as we 
have seen, responds with a declaration that the slaves of 
rebels are freemen, and the country gathers about him 
with a tenacity which jealous officials and investigating 
committees strive vainly to weaken. 

If there is anything proved by our experience in this 
war, it is that one true man may chase ten thousand old- 
line Democrats. Try it, Mr. President ; remember that 
your boldest word has had the noblest echo from the 
people, and try a braver one yet ! Utter, loud enough for 
the nation, the slave, the world to hear, the watchword, 
Liberty to all, and though traitors in the North may 
writhe, they shall be as fangless as the Rebellion shall 
thenceforth be ; for every true heart upon this earth is at 
your side from that instant, to live and to die. 

You will hear the cry " Abolitionist ! " no doubt : I 
will not believe that it can terrify you. What is an Aboli- 
tionist ? He is simply a man who desires liberty for the 
entire family of man : — this is a wretch dastardly enough 
to oppose having that done to another man, his wife and 
child, which he would not like to have done to himself, his 
wife and child! George Washington, when he declared 
that the first wish of his heart was to have Slavery abol- 
ished, — George Washington, when he called to be Chief 
Justice of the United States the founder and President of 
the New York Abolition Society, John Jay, — was this 
monster, an Abolitionist ! His real farewell address, the 
will made on his deathbed, freeing his slaves, was an ap- 
peal for abolition. 



TO THE PRESIDENT 167 

I believe there are few who doubt that it is your jeal- 
ous care for the Border States, and a (supposed) large 
number of Unionists in the far South, that constitutes the 
chief obstacle in the way of this radical cure. Even so far 
as their own testimony on this subject is concerned, we 
have no reason to believe that the real Southern Unionists 
are represented in this emergency by the men who have 
been sent to Washington merely by habit in comparatively 
unimportant times. What reason have we to believe that 
Southern Unionists are represented by Andy Johnson or 
Mr. Crittenden, more than Ohioans by Vallandigham ? 
The people do not reach you so skilfully or readily as 
these politicians. I remember, Sir, to have heard you ex- 
pressing a doubt as to the readiness of these people for 
any dealing with Slavery, when a moment before I had 
been conversing with a very intelligent Unionist from 
Florida, a large proprietor and slaveholder in that State, 
who informed me that he had been in the anteroom of 
the White House for several hours a day for nearly three 
weeks, without being received or heard. He came to give 
it as his opinion, and that of the half-dozen Union men 
whom he knew in his State, that to abolish Slavery was 
the one way of putting down the Rebellion. I fear that 
many of those hours were occupied by men from the Border 
States who would not have represented the real loyalists 
of the South half so well. An acquaintance of some years 
with the people of the mountain ranges extending through 
Maryland down to Alabama leads me to affirm that two 
thirds of them would welcome a decree of emancipation 
by the government; whilst a generous response would 
not fail from the eighteen thousand Germans of New 
Orleans, and the five thousand apiece of Richmond and 
Louisville. Of Missouri I need not speak : nothing but a 



168 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

disability in the Constitution of that State prevents an 
almost immediate response to your offer of " cooperation." 
That State had, before the Rebellion broke out, 150,000 
slaves ; it now has less than 50,000. A decree of emanci- 
pation, paying loyal masters of course, would be a great 
relief to that State from its complications. 

There is but a very small number of loyal slaveholders 
in the Border States ; and surely they could not show their 
loyalty more than by refusing to allow this slight interest 
to stand in the way of the national safety. What would 
the country say, if, when you asked men owning land 
around Washington or St. Louis to yield their land and 
houses, that national defences might be made perfect, they 
had refused ? They would be esteemed disloyal, and their 
lands taken. You, Sir, have given the handful of slave- 
holders in the Border States a good military reason why 
they should emancipate, in your special message ; to the 
country it seems a sufficient touchstone of their loyalty or 
disloyalty. 

Suppose they should not receive the full market value for 
their slaves, — though we could pay that at far less cost than 
allow them to remain slaves, — should the loyalists of the 
Slave States have more indemnity than the loyalists of the 
Free States ? Are we not all, on account of this institu- 
tion they are hugging, losing our business, income, paying 
enormous taxes ? Shall our capitalists in the Free States 
demand of the government so much on the dollar for all 
they have lost ? Loyal men. North and South, must expect 
to lose ; and though to hush the crying children, and to be 
generous to those who are unused to labour, we are all will- 
ing to compensate these Southern loyalists, yet in strict 
justice the injured commerce of the North has as much 
right to demand compensation. 



TO THE PRESIDENT 169 

In God's name, let us have no half-work in this mat- 
ter ! This pitiful little interest must not spancel the nation 
in the great stride now demanded of it. Though to them 
emancipation itself will bring wealth and more lasting 
benefits, yet let them be paid ; as Sumner said, " A bridge 
of gold would be cheap, should the retreating fiend de- 
mand it." 

One stroke of Titian's brush, it is said, changed the face 
of a leopard to that of a beautiful woman. Freedom is a 
finer artist, and beneath her touch, barren Virginia and 
wasted Kentucky and semi-chaotic Missouri would have 
their myriad sleeping energies break forth into smiling 
bloom and beauty. 

Do you think. Sir, that, after this fearful experience, the 
American people would welcome you and hail you as their 
national saviour if you should restore them the Union with 
Slavery in it? Never, never ! The masses may tell you so, 
little knowing what a return to the Union with Slavery in 
it means ; but it would not take long to teach them, and 
they would heap your name with curses ! 

You may think, and they may think, that it would be 
a safe experiment to try : you may say, " The institution 
must be on the downhill : it can never rule the country 
again." Oh, Sir, I beseech you to remember that it was 
precisely because Slavery seemed to our fathers to be on 
the downhill, precisely because they thought they saw its 
grave already dug in the limitation of the slave trade, that 
they suffered it to exist in the new government. They dealt 
with it as on the downhill, and lo I we reap the bitter re- 
sults of their mistake. 

Slavery has far less appearance now of being on the 
downhill than it had then. 

Good things come hard ; but you have only to leave 



170 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

your field unoccupied by valuable growths one season for 
it to be filled with weeds. If you could give us the Union 
again with Slavery in it, — which God forbid ! — it would 
only be for the old strife of wheat and tare to be renewed, 
only to have new war-fires kindled in which to burn the 
tares which the enemy is ever ready to sow and foster. 

But, Sir, it is very plain that the alternative of restor- 
ing the Union with Slavery in it is not longer before you. 
You are to restore to us the Union without Slavery, or you 
are to restore to us a country with its form of government 
radically changed. These are the alternatives. The sword 
can kill the body, but not the soul : it must leave the dis- 
loyal element, the moral causes of rebellion, in full activity. 
The sword cannot change muttering hate to love, or treach- 
ery to good faith. It is fundamental in the theory of our 
government that, from the Presidency down to a village 
justice, people must be represented by officers elected by 
themselves and from their own midst. There could never 
have been any obstacle to the glorious development of 
republican government in this country, had we not taken 
into it a so-called institution whose nature it was to prey 
upon the very tissues of all government. That which 
monarchies had been unable to get along with, we tried to 
preserve in a republic ; and the experiment has turned 
out like the ancient mode of punishment which bound 
a living body limb to limb, face to face, with a rotting 
corpse, until the living should perish by the stench of the 
dead. 

Now, either we must cut the cords which bind us to this 
body of death or it must assimilate us to itself ; either we 
must be free from Slavery or we must adopt its rules, — 
we must impose masters upon eight millions of people, we 
must rule by military control, we must suspend the guar- 



TO THE PRESIDENT 171 

anties of the citizen's rights for military reasons. And 
thus American Liberty, from being a rock under our feet, 
would become the merest shifting quicksand. 

Every time, Sir, that the gates of Forts Warren and 
Lafayette swung open, the shriek of their hiuges pierced 
every heart in America which knew the sacred value of 
those writs and forms which Treason compelled you to set 
aside ; for they knew that, whilst you could be trusted, it 
was not certain that your successor could be. Our fathers 
had a good old version of a Psalm which ran thus : — 

He digged a pit, 

He digged it deep, 

He digged it for his brother, 

But through his sin, 

He did fall in 

The pit he digged for t' other. 

"Would it not be poetic justice, Mr. President, if, Slavery 
having digged this pit of arbitrary and martial law for us, 
it should be allowed to slide into the pit it " digged for 
t' other " ? 

Sir, in five years the most ardent Universalist would 
provide a special clause for the everlasting damnation of 
the man who helps to have that pit filled up without Slav- 
ery being at the bottom of it ! 

Let me not be regarded as one of those who are ready to 
cavil at the President's use of these unusual powers ; they 
were used honestly, firmly, and in no case for persecution ; 
but there were many who could not help thinking how 
much better it were if the same ends could be reached by 
sacrificing, not a pound of living flesh, but the cancer 
feeding on that flesh, — not the writ of habeas corpus, 
but the base interest that makes men traitors ! 

The Hour I have called Golden, but it comes to us in 



172 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

sombre, dreary habiliments. Ah, God! to pass througb 
these hospitals where lie the young men who a year ago 
were the ruddy flowers of happy homes ! To see the 
wounded, rebel and loyal, seated on straw in wagons, 
foot-sole to foot-sole, the same clear, frank eyes meeting 
each other, the same young, honest voices from both, and 
not to see the horrid demon driving both ! Alas for the 
hearts on the battlefield and those at home ; for the ball 
that pierces any soldier's heart never lodges there, but 
speeds onward to pierce other hearts far away ; and for 
the broken prophecies and promises of life ; for those 
whose life ebbs away to-day where no hand is near to 
soothe, no kind one near to receive the last sigh, and trea- 
sure for the dear ones at home the last message of love I 
You are our President, and, in a sacred sense, these 
are all your children ; and now you seem to me like one 
whose name you bear, and who, in obedience to the first 
Voice which he heard, laid his beloved son upon the altar 
of the Highest ; but when thus his faith was proved, lo, 
an angel appeared, and cried. Stay thy hand! and the 
angel pointed to a brute which God had provided for that 
sacrifice in place of his son. Father, you have done well 
in obeying the first voice which called for the painful sac- 
rifice of your own children ; but listen well, I implore you, 
if there be not an angel of peace crying, Stay thy hand ! 
Watch well if there be not a shining finger pointing to 
the Brute which, and which alone, God hath provided for 
the sacrifice of this hour! 



SURSUM CORDA 173 

XXI 

SUKSUM CORDA 

Leaden is the casket before us, and on it is written, " Who 
chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath." 

Leaden, meagre, and pale ; but he is a fool who would 
choose the caskets of gold and silver in its place; for it 
contains Liberty, 

Bresquet, jester to Francis I, kept a Calendar of Fools. 
When Charles V, confiding in the generosity of Francis, 
passed through France to appease the rebellion of Gaunt, 
Bresquet put that Emperor into the Calendar of Fools. 
His king asked him the cause. He answered, " Because 
you have suffered at the hands of Charles the greatest 
bitterness that ever prince did from another ; nevertheless, 
he would trust his person into your hands." " Why, Bres- 
quet," said the king, " what wilt thou say if thou seest him 
pass back in as great safety as if he marched through the 
midst of Spain." Said Bresquet, " Why, then I will put 
him out of the Calendar of Fools, and put you in." 

History also keeps a Calendar of Fools. 

It has already ascribed it to the insanity and folly, 
which, thank God, form such large composite parts of all 
evil, that Slavery has cast off its legal protection, and 
passes through the country it has so foully wronged, a 
branded felon and outlaw. But if this be asinine in Slav- 
ery, what place in History's Calendar of Fools will be too 
prominent for this nation, should it permit this devil to 
pass as safely as ever, crushing under his cloven foot every 
fair growth of Liberty, and impudently defying the coun- 
try upon which he has brought every conceivable woe ? 

There is danger that, if left to our politicians, this 



174 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

golden hour will simply inscribe " Yankee " on the Cal- 
endar of Fools; for there is nothing so unfathomably 
stupid as moral cowardice. "Fear nothing but fear," 
says Montaigne. To-day you can count on the fingers of 
one hand the men in Washington who can say Abolition- 
ist without the normal prefix dammed. When the Presi- 
dent, even, wishes to use the phrase in a friendly way, he 
says Aholishment. It is plain that these men can be used 
by the earnest hearts of America only for filtration. As 
the waters of our great Western rivers are passed through 
filters of stone before they are clear enough to drink, so 
the somewhat muddy streams of American Liberty must 
find in Cabinet and Congress their stony filters, whose 
restraint will be purifying. 

But it will be purifying only if we see that the streams 
pass through them : remaining checked by them, the wa- 
ters shall become stagnant and poisonous. 

We have no Joshua to bid the sun stand still and pro- 
long our Golden Hour beyond its last diamond minute. 
Meanwhile, the inevitable horizon of earthly necessity ap- 
proaches nearer and nearer to it. The exigencies of North- 
ern society may assist traitors to put an end to this war, 
even if it be not a noble end : the heavy taxes may bring 
men down on their bellies. The rude state of society in the 
South, not more complex than an oyster, can coexist with 
the rude conditions of war; but the North will presently 
find an apology for evading the responsibility it should 
fulfil ; for it has no right to allow a barbarous Slavery- 
despotism to build itself upon a half of this continent. 

But will foreign powers allow this war to continue 
indefinitely ? 

Revolutions are not bad, sometimes ; the revolutions of 
this planet, for instance ; they go on and do not upset the 



SURSUM CORDA 175 

world's universal table, nor rust its loom, nor interfere 
with France's afternoon cigar. Nay! by such revolution 
all these are supplied. It seems to get a slow entrance 
into the American cerebrum, that in a family of nations, 
as in a family of individuals, one member is not permitted 
to throw all the rest into confusion. Enough time is to 
be allowed for the vindication of national as of personal 
individuality ; but when nationality becomes burning down 
St. Paul's to broil Jonathan's steak, then nationality is 
the synonym of nuisance. It is sure to be abated. My 
American masters, if you desire to have the nations pause 
and admire before your Revolution, and not hustle it 
off as a sham, let it be one spheral and vital, leading on 
springtide and waving summer-fields, for you and for the 
weary world. Heavens ! what an opportunity you have for 
this I 

The most imminent danger now, as it has been from the 
first, is that we may be induced by the semi-loyal States, 
whose treachery is all the more dangerous because it be- 
lieves itself the only loyalty, to allow Slavery to remain 
unburied, to be revived under their moonshine. 

Few as are the slaveholders and the slaves in these 
Border States, let us not be deceived into thinking them 
of little importance in the issue. There is a German 
maxim which reads, " Give the Devil a lock of your hair, 
and he will be sure to get your whole head." 

Three Hessian flies only were seen upon the cabin wall 
of a Dutch ship which approached an American wharf; 
now what field in the continent has not known the devas- 
tations of the Hessian fly ? Six Norway rats swam ashore 
from another Dutch ship in our waters; now where is 
the cellar without them ? Two hundred and forty years 
ago twenty slaves were brought to Jamestown, Virginia, in 



176 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

Dutch ship No. 3 ; now where can you go, from Bunker 
Hill to Sumter, without hearing the rattle of a slave's 
chain ? 

Brothers, let us make a clean sweep of this thing whilst 
we are about it ! 

An ancient Persian scripture says : " Justice is so dear 
to the heart of Nature, that if at last an atom of injustice 
should be found, the blue sky would shrivel like a snake- 
skin to cast it off." 

A single slave held in this nation will break it to frag- 
ments again, and as often as we try it; just as a single 
powder-grain, ignited at the heart of the rock of Gibraltar 
would rive it asunder. Will those who know that the rights 
of the poorest man are of more importance than a thou- 
sand unions ever keep silent or patient with even one fetter 
in the land? By God, never ! 

These slaves of the loyal States we take because they 
are essential to any permanent peace in the country, and 
if we are compelled to abnormal strife for peace, we have 
a military right to strive for a permanent peace, and not 
merely to defeat an army in this or that engagement. We 
take these slaves as we have taken the houses and stock of 
loyal men on our march. Let them bring in their bills. 
Doubtless we shall have to pay more than the number of 
loyal slaveholders would warrant ; for we shall be sure to 
find, when pay-day comes, that every slaveholder had been 
all along a very Abdiel for fidelity: but who shall stop 
to count the money that goes to ransom a race and a 
nation from the slavery which buys and sells the bodies 
of the one and the souls of the other ? 

We shall need liberation first in these Border States, 
not only because we must make a clean sweep of the evil, 
but because these Border State negroes are to be our guar- 



SURSUM CORDA 177 

anties of good faith to the more Southern negroes ; they 
are to be both our banners hung out upon the outer walls 
and our telegraph lines along which the electric word of 
Liberation shall flash. 

And here is just where all these confiscation bills will 
accomplish nothing real. Every slave would see that Trum- 
bull's bill would end in a transfer of masters, — and he 
would not respond to it. We must not forget, that between 
us and those Negroes there stand our mediatorial Mary- 
landers, and darling pets, the Kentuckians, — just sym- 
pathetic enough with seceders to buy up claims to and 
descriptions of running slaves, just star-spangled enough 
to get back the same from free lines or States, — and from 
these Border States as from an ark, when the deluge sub- 
sided the South would be repopulated with the same slaves. 

Have you, friend, in these late months, sat in the 
gallery of Congress, heart-sick, hearing everything dis- 
cussed but the right thing ? The hour-hand wheels round 
and round, and above the clock sits the Muse with motion- 
less pen, the very bronze eye sad that no true movement 
could she record on her scroll. Confiscation, forfeiture, 
colonization, — the Southern white man laughs at these, 
the black man cannot hear them. Does the Negro wish to 
be exiled ? Or does he wish to come North to be kept in 
jail till two witnesses prove his master a traitor ? 

My countrymen you walk a scimitar bridge to your 
Paradise, and the billows of hell underneath receive him 
who steps one inch, as much as him who steps a yard aside. 

Sitting there, I was reminded of how an old uncle of 
our neighbourhood would quiz us. " Boys, " he said once, 
" I got a letter from a little boy to-day, and — ha, ha ! — 
how do you think he spelt dog f " Then we all made our 
guesses, — dogg, doag, dogge, dorg. At last, when we 



178 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

have exhausted our ingenuity, the old uncle quietly replies, 
" Why, he spelt it d-o-g, of course." Just as idly and as 
childishly are our rulers trifling with the sacred hours, to 
see if something else cannot be made to wield the divine 
spell of simple Justice, 

You are praying for and talking of the coming man. 
Would he find faith in the land ? Are you quite sure you 
would not crucify him — or hang him, as the American 
way is — should he come ? That is what the Jews did with 
their Coming Man, after they had been praying Heaven 
to send him for four thousand years. Two years ago the 
wild, half -clad forerunner of our coming man, whose meat 
was wild honey, was heard in the wilderness of Virginia, 
and his head was brought in a charger to Slavery : so 
much it cost him to declare the axe laid to the root of the 
accursed tree. How little does this nation know what a 
right and true man, should he break into our midst, would 
do with us ! Little see we the piled shreds of broken red 
tape, — little the mountain of the refuse of epaulets and 
brass buttons ! He would redistribute Washington into 
the original elements, and gather it for loam about the 
roots of the sapling he would rear. 

Yet pray on, O people, for the coming man ! Not as 
you expect it shall be his advent ; but he shall come, and 
before the masses are ready for him. Somewhere the 
granite is crystallizing for his bones ; somewhere the 
metal is refining for his blood ; somewhere Nature is 
fashioning the exquisite lobes of his brain : presently 
America's maternal cry shall be heard, and the man shall 
clasp hands with the hour. 

When it is understood to be absolutely certain that the 
honest masses of this country are determined never again 
to compromise with Slavery, nor to allow it the protection 



SURSUM CORDA 179 

of tbis government, then the national saviour will come, 
by whose life and death the nation will be saved. But do 
these honest masses realize that if a compromise, involv- 
ing an amnesty to Slavery, should be proposed by the 
Confederates to our Cabinet and Congress as at present 
organized, it would certainly be accepted ? 

Up, hearts of America, and let your irrevocable " Get 
thee hehind us ! " thunder at the gates of the capital, and 
go crashing through the South, a bomb whose flame can- 
not be extinguished ! Let Slavery know that it shall never, 
never find peace in this nation ; let your rulers know that 
if they shall give you a Union with Slavery in it, you will 
make of it such a Union as fire and gunpowder make ! 

The men who are to save this nation, if it is to be saved, 
are those who see that it must and should rise or fall with 
simple justice ; and those who strive for a Free Republic 
must see eye to eye. 

There is not one fibre of moral earnestness, not one 
atom of fidelity or conviction, more than is needed to 
rescue the nation from terrible dissolution, or the worse 
fate of a Union sealed in its dishonour. All hearts must 
work, and they must work together. 

The best friend of freedom in the government is the 
President. But in this matter he has refused to lead. Re- 
peatedly he said, " If the people feel so, let them organize 
their will and pass it through Congress," — ignoring the 
fact that the people had set him apart from their millions 
to organize from the feeling of the masses an operative 
will. Then, coming up among the people, they all said, 
" "We had best leave all this to the President : he is at the 
centre, and knows more than we do ; he '11 do the right 
thing at the right time." And so the President and the 
people have been all along playing at battledoor with the 



180 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

Slavery question, each tossing it to the other to be dealt 
with. At length Old Abe agrees to take a step. Borrow- 
ing a good idea from his former occupation, he inserts the 
smallest edge of a wedge into a small crack of the log ; 
then he says to Congress and the people, " Now, if you 
want to split that log, the way is to strike that wedge." 
Let us take the President at his word, and strike! 

How can you strike ? Let every man, woman, and child 
in this nation send his or her prayer to the Capitol to 
have Slavery abolished. And warn your representative to 
help this measure or hang himself on Capitol Hill before 
coming back. You need not be particular about the way : 
where there 's a will, there 's a way. All these technicalities 
are so much thin disguise for a wavering purpose : let 
Congress or the President rise to the point of striking 
Slavery dead, and whether they are States or Territories, 
or whether Andy Johnson is a military or civic officer, 
will be but a strife of words. 

The right to open schools for Negroes in North Caro- 
lina, against the laws of that State, includes the right to 
set every slave in it free. 

Upon the North the guilt of this Rebellion is heaviest ; 
and upon the North the retribution will be heaviest. The 
North has been cruel to the South, — cruel as is he who 
continues to trust to an infant the knife with which it has 
already gashed its flesh. 

O Northern Conscience, trace honestly the blood-drip- 
pings of this Rebellion, even if they lead to thine own 
door! 

If one should see a fellow man drinking poison, and 
should not strain every sinew to stop it, the law holds him 
justly as the suicide's murderer. How long have you sat 
with folded arms seeing your Southern brother drinking 



SURSUM CORDA 181 

this vile drug, which has finally maddened him ! How long 
did your representatives, your clergymen, your merchants 
cry Hu8h to all who lifted up the warning voice, — whilst 
to the slave's cry your ears were stopped with cotton, to 
his oppressor your tongue was sweetened with sugar? 
And now when, having gone forward upon the logical 
path, cleared by yourselves, — mobbing and hanging all 
who would have saved them, — they reach the inevitable 
climax of their fearful disease, still you will not be hu- 
mane enough to take the poison from their lips ; even now 
you are talking in cold blood about Jamaica and sugar, 
and whether by emancipation sugar rose a cent or a cent 
and a quarter ; still, whilst your left eye is on your ban- 
ner, your right is on your hogshead ! 

Nearly every human being sharing the blood of him 
who writes these words is arrayed against this country. 
You think them guilty traitors? But I remember how 
Northern preachers proved to them that they stood upon 
the Rock of Ages, how to them Northern representatives 
cried, " Great is Slavery, and the Constitution is its pro- 
phet ! " — and I will not fling hard names at them, lest 
they should strike leading Union men who deserted the 
South at the one moment when there might have been 
some courage in clinging to her ; the 

Ever strong upon the stronger side. 

But you, true-hearted Northmen, I implore, ere you go 
further in this butchery, to try if you cannot sai^e the 
South. What if this Republic should be gasping for a 
simple breath of justice, — the very atmosphere of Liberty ! 
At least shall we not wash our hands of their guilt con- 
cerning the crushed black and the equally crushed white 
of the South ? Oh, is there no power in Love greater than 



182 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

any that Hate can wield ? Is there no strength in Eternal 
Justice ? Is there in this noon of the nineteenth century 
so little power of heart and brain that we must yet adhere 
to the methods of the savage and the assassin ? 

We smile to-day at the heathen of antiquity who hesi- 
tated whether he would make his log into a god or a three- 
legged stool ; but our children may weep in the retrospect 
of this day, when a great nation, with its government 
before it to be necessarily refashioned, hesitated whether 
to make of it a centralization, whose three legs must be 
Southern barbarism. Northern demoralization, and perpet- 
ual strife, or a godlike Union impregnable as Justice 
itself. 

Courage, brothers ! much as the Devil has to do with 
it, this world still belongs to God. 

Be not entangled in the illusions which twine about and 
bind your rulers. Slavery seems to them a strong thing ; 
so mariners have mistaken a fog-bank for the rock of Gib- 
raltar. There is not a mushroom that grows which is not 
stronger than Slavery, against which every whispering 
wind, every sunbeam, every leaf, and every human blood 
drop is conspiring. I know that our government sees it 
as a strong steed without which it cannot ride to victory 
in the South; but it is a stick horse which it childishly 
carries, maintaining that it is carried by it : just let the 
government stop carrying Slavery, and it will fall the 
dead stick that it is. I challenge the President to permit 
me — one of the weakest and obscurest friends of Free- 
dom — to liberate the slaves of the South, promising only 
that I shall not he interfered with hy United States law, 
I will not call for any protection by its arms from the South- 
erners; the law of gravitation will bear the small stone 
cut from the mountain-top down its sides, even to the gulf. 



SURSUM CORDA 183 

The whining and cursing of the pro-slavery men in 
Congress are a confession that Slavery, with its swash- 
' ing and martial outside, is conscious of this essential 
weakness. Those Border State men know well that the 
winds and rains and heats of this thawing season have 
made its crust so thin that it will not bear the pressure of 
one firm foot. And, alas! the indecent eagerness with 
which the President hastened to refasten the gyves upon 
a million human beings whom the noble Hunter had set 
free — and who are free — engenders the saddest mis- 
giving of the hour, namely, that the President knows the 
weakness of Slavery, knows that he could free the land 
forever from that crime and its retribution now heavy 
upon us, but heeds some baser end to be subserved by 
retaining this institution. 

A million blood-stains crimson your hands, Mr. Presi- 
dent ; damned spots, which not all the rivers and lakes in 
America can wash away ; but in one globule of ink upon 
your table you may wash them away. If your Golden Hour 
shall pass, and those beings you have cruelly robbed re- 
main slaves, the time will come when you will pray bitterly 
to be able to exchange your lot with the lowliest, most 
deeply wronged slave in South Carolina ! 

But even with all these powers enlisted to sustain that 
institution (!), which without them could not stand one 
day, it is not, brothers, a formidable foe, if we can bring 
to confront it the true and spotless spirit of Liberty. 

Strong as the other is weak — chief among those per- 
ilous rudimentary laws which, being bred in the bone of 
the world, must come out in the flesh — is Liberty. There 
is a story of a chemist who undertook with powerful 
agents to extract a birthmark from his wife's cheek. After 
a long while he drew it out, but he drew her life with it. 



184 THE GOLDEN HOUR 

Liberty Is the birthmark of man, as it is his birthright ; 
and when man ceases to love Liberty, it will be because 
his race has become extinct. 

The spirit of Liberty is as ancient as the most con- 
servative could desire; it began with the first throb of 
life which ever stirred the heart of Nature. From that 
heart comes the ascending scale of life, each higher animal 
form differing from that which preceded it simply by its 
greater freedom. Where the oyster was anchored to a 
rock, the fish moves freely ; where the blossom was bound 
to the stem, the butterfly comes, a freed blossom. Each 
form was only a revolutionary effort for more independent 
life, The human form, when it appeared, was the last 
and the decisive battle of the animal to rise up from the 
earth, and stand free and erect, by that sign sovereign of 
the planet. Thus the everlasting burden of Nature rolls 
through the echoing caverns of past epochs, and bursts up 
in the hearts and tongues sent from her womb to cry 
aloud, and to struggle endlessly for Liberty. When man 
first wronged his brother, that brother's blood cried to 
heaven from this same old earth ; and until the last wrong 
is righted and the last of her children free, her mother's 
heart will heave with pain, and utter its uncontrollable 
protest, to be followed, if unheeded, with fiercer earth- 
quakes than these. 

Admit not, then, into your hearts a single fear for Lib- 
erty's cause with her impotent antagonist, whatever fears 
you may have that this proud government, having deliber- 
ately taken the side of Slavery, may be buried in its grave, 
which every bayonet. North and South, is digging, and 
equally. But not to that end, nor for that reason, should a 
true and faithful heart seize the bayonet or other imple- 
ment, whether the government call or command. Rather 



SURSUM CORDA 185 

let each friend of his country plant himself upon his loy- ' 
alty to that which is higher than the banner of the Union, 
— the banner of Liberty ; with that sacred ensign floating 
over him, let him stand or be stricken down. Up, hearts, 
and let each deliver his own soul ! Up, and the government 
will be forced to obey you, for you will bear the tables of 
eternal law in your hand ! Men need not be dozing in a 
White House, or wrangling in a Capitol, to be strong: each 
step upward in office masks another shackle assumed. But 
true hearts are free, — free to stand, or be hanged, if need 
be, — and Liberty may yet need her martyrs in the North. 

If this country is to be saved, the Abolitionists are to 
save it; and, though they seem few in numbers, they are 
not by a thousandth so few as were Christians when Jesus 
suffered, or Protestants when Luther spoke. There is need 
only that we should stand as one man, and unto the end, 
for an absolutely Free Republic, swearing to promote eter- 
nal strife until it be attained, — until in waters which Agi- 
tation, the angel of Freedom, has troubled, the diseased 
nation shall bathe, and be made every whit whole. 

The Golden Hour is before us: there is in America 
enough wisdom and courage to coin it, ere it passes, into 
national honour and peace, if it is all put forth. 

Up, hearts I 



THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

BY 

MONCUEE D. CONWAY 



Bespect the gods, but keep them at a distance 

Confucius 



LONDON 

JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN 74 & 75 PICCADILLY 

1870 

(This was also published by Henry Holt & Co., New York) 



The pure Earth is situated in the pure Heavens. 

The soul which has passed through life with purity and moderation 
obtains the gods for fellow travellers and guides, and rests in the abode 
suited to it. There are indeed many and wonderful places in the Earth, 
and it is neither of such a kind nor of such a magnitude as is supposed 
by those who are accustomed to speak of the Earthy as I have been per- 
suaded by a certain person. 

Socrates. 



HOW I LEFT THE WOKLD TO COME 
FOK THAT WHICH IS 

EARLY in my childhood, my parents entrusted me 
to the care of the well-known guide, Mr. Bunyan, to 
be taken from the City of Destruction to the Celestial 
City, where they themselves had long resided. My ven- 
erable and kind guide beguiled the way with interesting 
stories, but could not prevent its being a hard journey. 
Indeed, when we came to the chief difficulties and dangers 
of the road, he would generally disappear from my side, 
confessing that he could not render me any assistance, 
and joining me again only where the way became pleasant 
and plain. So ere I reached my teens I had struggled in 
the Slough of Despond, and before they had passed had 
conversed alternately with Messrs. Greatheart and Fee- 
blemind, encountered ApoUyon, and seen the inside of 
Doubting Castle. 

At last, not without some wounds and bruises, I fell 
swooning at the gates of the city. On waking, I found 
myself inside, surrounded by many friends and rela- 
tives, who warmly congratulated me on my escape from 
the City of Destruction and the perils of the way, and 
had much to say in praise of the Lord of the city in which 
they lived. The title of this great potentate was, I learned, 
the Prince of Otherworldliness, and my sole occupation 
would be to sit upon a purple cloud with a golden trumpet, 
through which I was to utter perpetually glorifications of 
his magnificence, and inform him how much reason he 
had to be satisfied with himself. 



190 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

For a time this was pleasant enough. The purple cloud 
acted as a screen against many disagreeable objects. The 
dens of misery and vice, the hard problems of thought, 
the blank misgivings of the wanderers amid worlds un- 
realized, were all shut out from view; and though I was 
expected, as a matter of form, to say I was a miserable 
sinner, it was with the distinct understanding that I was 
all the more our Prince's darling for saying so. 

At length, however, the novelty of all this began to 
wear off. I felt my arms getting stiff with disuse. It 
seemed to me that our Prince must be sufficiently aware 
by that time of his grandeur, and it appeared almost ego- 
tistical to call his attention further to my own insignifi- 
cance, besides the doubtful sincerity of doing so while I 
regarded myself as one of his elect. But, alas, these were 
but the beginnings of my perception of the drawbacks 
attending a residence in the domain of Otherworldliness. 
Reports were constantly reaching us of pilgrims who had 
perished by the way in a certain pit whose fiery mouth 
my guide had pointed out to me on the journey from the 
City of Destruction. I was expected to rejoice in, rather 
than commiserate, their fate, as being essential to the dig- 
nity of our sovereign ; but this was very difficult, and the 
more I reflected on the subject, the more it seemed to me 
a questionable source of majesty. 

As time waxed on, I perceived that our city was not 
only growing in size, but altering its character. Going 
one day to the city gate, I found that it had been re- 
moved to make way for a much broader entrance, and I 
met a very miscellaneous crowd cotning in. Seeing that 
they were much fresher in their looks than I had been 
after the same journey, I conversed with some of them, 
and learned for the first time that the Celestial Railway 



HOW I LEFT THE WORLD TO COME 191 

had been opened, and that this had led to a tide of immi- 
gration. The pilgrim could now travel in a first-class car- 
riage, and his pack be checked through. A pilgrim has 
since made the world familiar with this result of the en- 
terprise of Mr. Smooth-it-away. His account, however, is, 
as I have learned, not entirely accurate ; for instance, the 
Slough of Despond was not filled up by volumes of French 
and German philosophy, but by enormous editions of an 
English work showing the safest way of investing in Both 
Worlds. Moreover, it is but just to say that the engi- 
neering feat by which the Hill Difficulty was tunnelled is 
due to Professor Moonshine, whose works showing that 
the six days of creation mean six geological periods, and 
that miracles are due to the accelerated workings of nat- 
ural law, also furnished the material of a patent key, by 
which many pilgrims are enabled to pass with ease through 
Doubting Castle. The new pilgrims informed me that 
most of them had been for some time residing in Vanity 
Fair, but that, by various measures of conciliation, that 
fascinating and fashionable resort had become a suburb 
of the Celestial City, and was incorporated with the do- 
main of Otherworldliness. Having read in Mr. Bunyan's 
Guide-Book that our city was of pure gold, they had some 
thoughts of settling in it. Many of them having thus es- 
tablished themselves in our realm, it began to show start- 
ling changes. There had been, for instance, no part of 
my old road along which I had passed more shudderingly 
than the Plain Ease and Lucre Hill, where I heard the 
groans of those who had fallen through its treacherous 
sward into the silv8r-mines. What was my astonishment 
now to see a beautiful park of just the same kind, a hill 
the very image of Lucre Hill, made in the very centre of 
our city ! This place became the fashionable promenade 



192 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

and place of resort. Ladies there displayed the cross as a 
golden ornament, and all around it was a bazaar where the 
pearl of price was dealt in by tradesmen, who rejoiced in 
the inscription over the park gates — " Godliness is Gain." 

There gradually grew within me a deep misgiving, and 
I began to dwell on memories of the so-called City of 
Destruction, on which, as I was surprised to learn, fire 
had not yet been rained down. One day I got hold of a 
journal printed in that city. From it I learned that there 
were things going on there which seemed strangely incon- 
sistent with the bad character I had always heard given to 
it. Men and women there, so I read, were devoting their 
energies to the education of the ignorant, the help of the 
poor ; they were searching reverently into the laws of 
nature ; they were celebrating in beautiful poems a Ruler 
of their city whose name was Love, who sent his rain and 
sunshine on the evil and the good. There were innocent 
children passing with laughter and dance into the healthy 
vigour of maturity. Reason, Liberty, Justice, Wealth, 
were there advancing, and Science was clearing from the 
sky of Faith every cloud of fear and superstition. 

As I pondered these reports, the purpose grew within 
me to make an excursion, at least, to that city, which I 
had left too early in life to know much of personally ; and 
so one day I went to the station and asked for a ticket 
to the City of Destruction. Amazed at my request, the 
station-master informed me that there were no trains run- 
ning that way for passengers, — they had only arrange- 
ments for bringing people away from that accursed place ; 
and he further advised me to be cautious lest I should be 
put under restraint as a fit subject for the lunatic asylum : 
there was a flourishing institution of that character in the 
city. 



HOW I LEFT THE WORLD TO COME 193 

After this I kept quiet for a time, and tried to be con- 
tented with my purple cloud and trumpet ; but in vain. I 
confided to my parents my desire to return for a time to 
my native place, but they wept at the bare mention of the 
project, and evidently feared that my wits were going. 
Again I waited, and sought to believe that it was best to 
remain where I was. At length, however, there came to me 
one who spoke with a voice not to be disobeyed. He laid 
on me a burden, and gave me a shield called Truth, and 
said : " Henceforth thou shalt be a pilgrim. From a world 
believing the incredible, adoring where it should abhor, 
thou shalt depart, never to return. Whither shall be opened 
to thee as thou shalt journey ; whence is already plain." 

Then I turned my face toward the old world I had so 
painfully left. As I drew near the border of our Prince's 
domain, I was met by one of his officers, who informed me 
that I should find a bad road, and that the country was 
almost impassable. "In building the railway by which 
pilgrims to the Celestial City now travel so comfortably," 
he said, " all the disagreeables and dangers they once had 
to encounter have been heaped on the path you propose to 
undertake. The dirt taken from the tunnel of the Hill 
Difficulty you will now find piled across your road. The 
Slough of Despond, displaced on our line, has settled in 
the way by which you must go. All the sorrows and pains 
once besetting the path of Christian now waylay him who 
would fly in the face of what has become the respectable 
and popular religion." 

Nevertheless, I went on. But before I had reached the 
verge of the Prince's dominions a large number of his 
liveried servants ran after me and began pelting me, 
crying : " Infidel I Atheist ! Neologist ! Pantheist ! Mad- 



194 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

Somewhat bruised, I hastened onward. Soon, however, 
there stood before me, preparing his darts, a monster, 
whom I at once recognized. " Why, how is this, Apol- 
lyon ? " I cried ; " when last I encountered you, you were 
trying to prevent pilgrims from reaching the Celestial 
City; surely you do not oppose their return ? " "Times 
are changed," he replied ; " since the railway has been 
opened, I have been taken into the employment of the 
Prince of Otherworldliness." Thereupon he let fly his 
darts, on each of which was written its name : " Popu- 
larity," " Parsonage," "Patronage," " Promotion," and the 
like. But with the aid of my shield I managed to pass 
him; and though afterward I had a dreary imprisonment 
in Doubting Castle, its lock yielded to the key of Trust, 
which some former pilgrim had dropped on the floor, and 
I arrived at last within sight of the great city. 

But it was yet very distant ; and, being weary after my 
long and toilsome journey, I ventured to approach a house 
which I saw. As I came nearer I perceived that it was the 
house of the Interpreter, and for some time I hesitated to 
go further, apprehending that he, too, would oppose my 
return. Remembering, however, that the obstacles to my 
leaving the Celestial City had been chiefly raised by those 
who had opposed my journey toward it, I hoped that the 
Interpreter might also have changed his allegiance, and 
I knocked at his door. My hope was true. He met me 
with a hearty welcome, and declared to me that the City 
of Destruction had changed its character as much as the 
Celestial City, and that he was anticipating in the future 
the same class of pilgrims returning thither as those who 
had once sought the realm of Otherworldliness. 

The Interpreter lit his candle and said : " Do you remem- 
ber the picture I formerly showed you in a private room, 



HOW I LEFT THE WORLD TO COME 195 

of a very grave person?" "I do, indeed," I said; "and 
this was the fashion of it : it had eyes lifted up to heaven, 
the best of books in its hand, the law of truth was written 
upon its lips, the world was behind its back, it stood as if 
it pleaded with men, and a crown of gold did hang over 
its head." " That picture," he said, " gradually became so 
dingy that once, when an old artist came hither, I accepted 
his offer to clean and retouch it ; you shall see it as he 
left it." On entering the well-known room, I saw that the 
portrait had been changed in several particulars. The 
grave person's eyes now looked downward; the book, 
partially closed, was placed on one side ; and the world, 
which has been behind, was now immediately under his 
eyes, and covered with inscriptions; the crown of gold 
suspended over his head had changed to luminous dust. 
When I asked the meaning of this change, the Interpreter 
said : " I will show you a new scene commanded by this 
house, which will unfold the significance of the picture." 
Thereupon, he took me to the top of the house, from which 
could be seen the two rival cities. What was my surprise 
to see a dark cloud gathering over the City of Otherworld- 
liness, with lightnings flashing from it, while over the 
so-called City of Destruction shone a beautiful rainbow ! 
" Thus," said the Interpreter, " that which exalteth itself 
must be abased, and that which humbleth itself shall be 
exalted. The city which, from being the domain of the 
lowly friend of man, the carpenter's son, has been given 
over to those who care more for bishoprics and fine liv- 
ings than for mankind, has become the City of Destruc- 
tion ; while that which has cared rather for man whom it 
can, than for God whom it cannot, benefit, has become 
the City of Humanity, which shall endure forever." 

The Interpreter then said that, as there were unhappily 



196 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

few pilgrims as yet going in my direction, lie would be 
able to accompany me on a part of the way. I was not so 
near, he said, as I might suppose. " That great metropolis 
which you see is not the city you seek ; it is Bothworlds- 
burg, and, though commercially connected with the City 
of Humanity, owns allegiance to the Prince of Other- 
worldliness, whose powerful agencies therein are marked 
by its spires. Its inhabitants pass six sevenths of their 
time in this world, and during the other seventh pray to 
their Prince, and protest loudly against taking any thought 
at all for this life. The confines of Bothworldsburg blend 
with those of the City of Humanity, which you can hardly 
trace out from here, and, indeed, may have some difficulty 
in finding. You must go through the tedious paths of 
Study, Reality, and Devotion, and when you arrive at the 
suburbs you will still have to be a pilgrim amid many 
nights and days before you reach the heart of the city. 
After arriving there, you will be left a good deal to your 
own guidance : the inhabitants are very busy ; they do not 
sit on purple clouds blowing golden trumpets. The only 
prayer to the Lord of that city is work ; the only praise 
is virtue. Its treasures are not obvious, but in hard ores. 
You will find the pavements golden only when you can 
transmute them to gold ; and only if you have found a 
pearl to carry in your own breast wiU its gates become 
pearl." 

Thereupon we set out on our way. Bothworldsburg, in 
which most of my wanderings occurred, so nearly resem- 
bled the metropolis in which these records and reflections 
are published, that I think it best to use its familiar names 
and events. This may be somewhat startling at first, and 
to some may seem even vulgar. But having abandoned 
my purple cloud, there is nothing better left me, out of 



THE CHURCH AUCTION 197 

which to build my visions, than London clay ; and I can 
only regret it if its importance and capabilities are exag- 
gerated by eyes which have been so long absorbed in 
otherworldly visions. At any rate, I can promise my reader 
that we shall be near that lowly vale where the pilgrims 
listened to the song of the shepherd's boy who " wears 
more of that herb called heart's-ease in his bosom than he 
that is clad in silk and velvet,*' and where, as Mr. Bunyan 
states on good authority, pearls have been found. 

THE CHURCH AUCTION 

I WENT to seek an auction room, where, I had heard, some 
Cures of Souls were to be sold. The company was thin, and 
evidently had misgivings about the property. A Jew bid 
for one of the livings, but the smile that faintly showed 
itself on the faces present — caused possibly by the oddity 
of a Catholic duke selling a Christian Cure of Souls to a Jew 
— caused him to withdraw. The auctioneer could hardly 
have had much of that kind of property to dispose of, and 
perhaps he just a little overpassed the bounds of the sen- 
timent around him when he accompanied his graphic pic- 
ture of a parsonage and its lawns with hopeful suggestions 
that the aged clergyman, then in occupation, would soon 
be evicted by the summons to another world. It became, 
indeed, plain that the auctioneer was a bungler for this 
once, at least, and he did not succeed in selling, if I remem- 
ber rightly, one of the livings. 

At length the bidders fell away one by one, and the auc- 
tioneer departed. I lingered at the door, looking out on 
some persons who were carrying holly to the market, for 
Christmas was near, and upon some children, who had 
already managed to coax a few premature smiles out of 



198 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

Santa Glaus. Turning around, I found that a singular com- 
pany had entered the room, and the auction was about 
to recommence. But this time it was a new auctioneer 
who had the matter in hand, — a shadowy individual, with 
piercing eye and a low voice, — a voice, however, insin- 
uating and cunning enough. It was waxing toward the 
twilight of a foggy day, and the auctioneer seemed almost 
a phantom speaking to phantoms. Amid occasional mur- 
murs, and with some pauses, he spoke somewhat after this 
wise : — 

" Gentlemen, the auctioneer who has just gone did not 
half know his business, or else he little comprehended the 
nature of the property he offered you. I take his place, 
and would remind you that this is no common lot. These 
churches have cost a great deal. Their founder had to be 
nailed on a cross that they might be built. Their walls are 
cemented with the blood of faithful hearts, the blood of 
confessors and martyrs. Thousands perished to put them 
in the state of repair in which I offer them to you. They 
are consecrated by centuries of sorrow and sacrifice ; in 
them souls have inly burned with the flame of devotion, 
stricken hearts raised their supplications to One who alone 
could fathom their needs; souls have brought to those 
altars their burdens of sin and sorrow, and earnest minds 
aspired there to know the mysteries of life and death. Their 
bells have rung in merrily the happy and sad years of wed- 
lock, and again have tolled above the sobs of mourners. 
Their spires have pointed grief and poverty from earthly 
struggle to eternal peace. All these have gone to swell the 
market value of the five Cures of Souls which the light 
of the blessed Reformation and the grace of the Duke of 
Norfolk enable me to offer you this day. 

" What ! does no one bid yet ? Did I hear some one 



THE CHURCH AUCTION 199 

muttering about money-cliangers scourged from the temple, 
or another call it outrageous that the Cures of Souls should 
be put up at auction ? Gentlemen, we are not children ; let 
us not refer to the childhood of the world for our prece- 
dents. We belong to a National Church which represents 
the apotheosis of decency. A whip of small cords, even for 
those who make the house of God a den of thieves, were 
vulgar and fanatical in these days. Above all, let us have 
no mawkish or hypocritical sentimentalism here. We are 
Englishmen, who know the pearl of price to be a pound 
sterling, and we pray that our Queen may live long in 
health and wealth. As for this church auction, permit me 
to remind you that it is no novel thing. The Christian 
Church of old was no sooner built, and the miserable scaf- 
fold at its base, on which its founder perished like a slave, 
raised to shine on its towers as the symbol of honour, than 
the imperial predecessors of his Grace our Duke put it up 
at auction. Truth bid for it ; Justice, Humanity, Holiness, 
did the same ; but Eoyalty and Superstition joined their 
purses and outbid the others. They have owned and con- 
ducted it to this day. Through them it is that the worship- 
pers in it sit on cushions instead of on the cold hillside. It 
is due to them that the successors of wretched fishermen, 
following one who had not where to lay his head, do now 
get fine episcopal salaries and palaces. 

" Gentlemen, it is a commercial age. Everything is in 
the market. What will you have ? quoth God ; pay for 
it and take it. Observe those saw-grinders at Sheffield ; 
their work demands that each shall live but half of his 
appointed years, and that the half he does live shall be 
passed in a dark and dismal Hades, bound, Ixion-like, 
around the grinding wheel. What wonderous muscles and 
sinews are there ! AJl the skill of the world could not make 



200 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

the least vein in him, or a drop of the red stream that 
courses through it. Myriads of ages contributed to give 
that flash to his eye ; and every divine element of the Uni- 
verse to organize that incomprehensible brain that thinks 
and feels behind all. What are these fine churches com- 
pared with that temple framed by God for his own abode, 
which without scandal is bought every hour by worshipful 
Cutlers and Colliers, and other Masters ? Who that has 
a mother, or sister, or daughter, need be reminded of the 
sacred and tender emotions that cluster about the heart of 
woman ? But pass through the Haymarket, or — the dis- 
tance is but little — hover with the crowd about the doors 
of the fashionable church where the millionaire buys his 
young bride, and tell me if womanhood is not in the market. 
" Nay, gentlemen, repair to the pulpits themselves ; is 
not every prayer, every sermon, bought and paid for? 
There is, indeed, an old story that the world once offered 
all its kingdoms if the founder of Christianity would only 
modify his ideas of worship, and that he refused ; but we 
must await the results of modern criticism before credit- 
ing such preternatural narratives as that. At any rate, 
we have England to deal with, not ancient Judea, where, 
it has been truly said, 'they didn't know everything.* 
Does any man here believe that the thirteen hundred 
livings in the hands of the House of Lords, or the livings, 
representing an annual income of two millions sterling, 
subject to private patronage, are mainly disposed of to 
the humblest and devoutest clergymen, without reference 
to any earthly or political considerations ? If so, let him 
move a return of the number of Liberal clergymen enjoy- 
ing livings owned by Conservative landlords. Let him 
explain why the clergy resist Irish disestablishment in a 
phalanx almost as solid as that with which the Dissenters, 



THE CHURCH AUCTION 201 

reading the same Bible and worshipping the same Christ, 
advocate it, if he would show the Church pulpits un- 
purchasable by any interest. But I need not confine my 
statement to any one Church. Look abroad through 
Christendom, and decide whether the scholarship, the 
ability, the ingenuity, and the eloquence, which still main- 
tain its dogmas, are not retained by fees. Does that learned 
Oxonian believe that the world was made in six days? 
Does he believe that on the seventh day God rested, and 
was refreshed after the fatigue of creation ? Does he be- 
lieve Athanasius, when he says Christ is Almighty God, 
rather than Jesus, when he says, ' My Father is greater 
than I ' ; and does he believe that all who adhere to the 
latter belief shall without doubt perish everlastingly? 
Does he believe that God has prepared everlasting fires, 
that he sends millions into the world knowing that they 
will eventually burn in the same, and that among those 
who will suffer that vengeance are all disbelievers of the 
orthodox creed? Does he believe that Newton, Hume, 
Channing, Franklin, Schiller, Goethe, Comte, Mill, Car- 
lyle, Emerson, Mazzini, Garibaldi are all destined to be 
damned, and that the generation they have been somehow 
empowered to train is to follow them to perdition ? Does 
he believe that God has assigned as the one Plan of Salva- 
tion a scheme which the majority of the best brains con- 
structed by himself find utterly incredible, — a scheme 
which the chief men of Science find contradicted by every 
fact of nature, and the jurors of Philosophy find revolting 
to reason ? If the scholarly graduate does not believe this, 
why does he preach it ? Has he not been knocked down at 
the bid of some grand Abbey, or Chapel, or Cathedral ? 
Has he said, * Get thee behind me,' to Promotion ? What 
has poor undowered Heresy to offer the young minister ? 



202 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

"Who shall look for the scholarly divine to utter the talis- 
manic word in his heart, when he knows that at that mo- 
ment the walls around him must crumble, and he be left 
to take his chance with the hunted foxes, but without even 
their certainty as to holes ? 

" Some foolish people, gentlemen, had fancied there was 
one wing of the clergy about to withdraw itself from the 
market. I say foolish, because such an exceptional course 
could be pursued by no aggregate interest ; not because 
there are not eccentric religionists who are now and then 
unwilling to exchange their convictions for the whole 
world. The particular clerical body to which I allude is 
constituted of those called Ritualists. These men had been 
showing such a restless and reckless antipathy to our most 
valuable religious standards that, albeit they had not much 
sense, some seemed to think they could not be bought up 
by the Establishment. They stood between their altar and 
the court of law. On the altar was throned Almighty 
God, claiming, in their belief, certain definite obeisances ; 
on the bench sat an Englishman authorized to continue to 
them the advantages and properties of the Establishment 
on condition that such obeisances should be withheld. As 
many genuflections as you please, gentlemen, as many 
altar-lights for God as you desire, only you must go out 
of our Church with them, as your Master went out of the 
Synagogue ! A plain choice was here to be made between 
God and man. The result was never doubtful. The Rit- 
ualists would like to be on the side of God ; they must be 
on that of the Property. 

"Consider these things, I pray you, gentlemen, and 
confess that it is but a straining at gnats to object to the 
selling at auction of the five churches, which I now again 
offer to the highest bidder, — saint or sinner, — without 



ST. ALBAN'S 203 

condition, save that no nonconformist shall preach in any- 
one of them, be he the angel Gabriel. Set in them clergy- 
men who shall teach men how to invest successfully in 
heavenly scrip. Let the children learn, as they did at the 
Big Tabernacle, that fleeing to Jesus means tea and cake 
at a distinguished brother's house, and limitless measures 
of the same hereafter. Let young and old there study the 
law and the profits. How much was the popularity of 
Christ's name increased in mediaeval Europe after it was 
stamped on a gold coin, and his leadership (ducatus) 
meant a ducat ! And is not the name of God on our own 
coins ? Wherever our race goes, this sanctity of the profit- 
able thing appears — as, across the ocean, in the Almighty 
Dollar. Other races may be proverbially 'gay,' ' romantic,' 
' theoretical ' : we are shopkeeping ; and in the sacred name 
of British Trade I offer you these Cures of Souls. Who 
bids? 

" Going — going — gone I " 

ST. ALBAN'S 

The reference to the Ritualists in the auctioneer's ha- 
rangue made me determine to visit St. Alban's Church. 
I have always had a little niche in my heart for the proto- 
martyr of Britain. As saints go, he was, perhaps, the most 
honest we have ever had in this region. He had none 
of that pious ingenuity which, at Rome, could convert a 
statue of Jupiter into Peter with his keys. He said plainly 
to the barbarians, " These deities to whom you offer sacri- 
fices are not deities, but devils ; and he that offers prayers 
or sacrifices to them, so far from securing the objects of 
his desire, will have everlasting tortures in hell for his 
reward." The deities thus blasphemed were not accus- 



204 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

tomed to postpone their retaliations to a future world, as 
poor Alban soon had reason to know. The clergyman and 
worshippers at the London church named after him were, 
about the time of my going there, giving some indica- 
tions that they would prove equally uncompromising with 
Alban toward their opponents. That, at least, would be a 
sign of life, and therefore hopeful. 

I went early enough to see them lighting their candles, 
and could not help thinking of the foolish virgins trim- 
ming their lamps. Give us, O buried Ages, of your oil, 
for our lamps of the Present have gone out ! Yet there 
was a singular archaeological interest about the scene. The 
legend of the Romans and Huns, above whose slain hosts 
two spectral armies arose to continue the battle in the air, 
seemed realized in the ritualistic controversy. These vest- 
ments and candles were the ghosts of ancient banners and 
war-fires, once the insignia of real religions. Would that 
one could add just enough to the forehead of yonder strong- 
headed priest to enable him to trace to their sources the 
candles on his altar! — gathered there, as he might be 
amazed to find, from the torches of Isis, Demeter, Ceres, 
from the Shechinah of Israel, from the altars of Sun- 
worship, from the Baal-fires, or Bel-fires, and Bon-fires, 
which still light up certain dark corners of Europe where 
paganism managed to linger longer than elsewhere : for 
the pagans (^pagani, rustics ; or heathen, dwellers on the 
heath) hold on to old religions which have been trampled 
out in the cities. 

A poet looked while the sun shone upon a sod, and 
a flower answered. A poem flowered in his mind at the 
same moment. It was the face of a goddess smiling from 
the earth in those tinted petals, who should be named 
Demeter. By Zeus, the Sky, she has conceived, and the 



ST. ALBAN'S 205 

floral offspring he will name Persephone. But now Winter 
comes — Pluto, the god of Hades, he shall be called — and 
snatches the flower away. Demeter, mourning her lost 
child, searches through the earth, attended by sunbeams 
for torches, and finds Persephone at last (a seed) in 
the Underworld. The sunbeams assure the partial victory 
of Demeter: they lead the flower to upper light and 
air again ; but on condition that she shall pass one third 
of the year (winter) with Pluto. This was the simple 
allegory dramatized in the Mysteries of Eleusis, revived 
in Rome in the myth of Ceres and Proserpine. It fell 
upon the stony ground of literalism in unimaginative 
Rome, and the common people worship Ceres as the su- 
preme power over the fruitfulness of land and cattle, and 
even of mothers. The temple raised to conciliate her in 
time of famine at Rome becomes the temple of the farm- 
ing and labouring classes ; hence, presently, of political 
importance. In it the decrees of the Senate must be in- 
spected by the tribunes of the people. Allied thus with 
the Democracy which is to sway Europe, Ceres gained a 
kind of immortality. Europa herself, after whom the con- 
tinent was named, was probably a mortification of the 
same goddess ; and we call our grains cereals after Ceres. 
It is not wonderful that the despised Christians were glad 
to ally themselves with this religion of the people, nor 
that the two should be jumbled in the brain of Constan- 
tino, — who was wont to consult pagan oracles as to how 
he should propagate Christianity, — and should through 
him pass together to mould Western Christianity. 

Thus it happens that, as Constantino had " Soli Invicto " 
on his coins, while the cross was on his banners, the priest 
here in St. Alban's, bowing before a cross, says, " Light 
of lights." From Eleusis, not from the Bible, he recites, 



206 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

" He descended into hell." Then he goes on with his brief 
discourse to declare his altar a real altar, with God actu- 
ally and supernaturally present upon it. This is the immor- 
tality which Ceres has obtained. The story should have 
been told of her, rather than of Tithonos, that the granted 
petition for immortality was followed by such decrepitude 
that the recipient was glad to be transformed to a grass- 
hopper. To this miserable form has the beautiful myth of 
Egypt, Greece, and Rome shrunk, as observable at St. 
Alban's. 

Nevertheless, there was a certain fervour about the ser- 
mon that set me asking whether Ritualism itself may not 
be, in a way, a Proserpine lost in Hades, a seed for which 
sunbeams are searching. Hides there not a germ of life in 
this doctrine of the " real presence," little suspected by 
this devout somnambulist ? At least he does not hold that 
God wrought in the earth eighteen centuries ago as he no 
longer does, or that his wonders were limited to Palestine. 
It is sad to see galaxies shrunken to St. Alban's candles, 
and Nature under a paten, and the long line of Seers and 
Prophets ending in this poupee in painted clothes. It is 
not delightful to witness a marionette performance of the 
sacred drama of the Universe. Yet at each moment, and 
with each phrase, the Ritualist was groping with bandaged 
eyes near the holiest truths. As one sees in caverns quaint 
repetitions of the forms of Nature, even to star-chambers 
or mimic firmaments, so does one find in the underground 
foliations of St. Alban's a mystical imitation of the upper- 
world growths of the human heart, and even of the vault 
of Reason. May we not hope that, as the law has come in 
to spoil these miserable vestments and dwarfed symbols, 
the Ritualists may be driven to some point where a gleam 
of the Day may reveal to them that it is a cellar they 



AN OLD SHRINE 207 

have mistaken for a saloon? Indignant, oppressed, their 
dry breasts heated once more with the feeling that they 
are no longer free, — still better, their minds forced once 
again to do duty in considering their position in England, 
and their consciences roused to question whether every 
hour they are not accepting the thirty pieces of the Estab- 
lishment for the betrayal of their Lord, — there may yet 
come a time when some strong human spirit shall enter 
here with wand of light, to touch this altar till it expand 
again to the green earth, and transform these candles 
into lamps of Science, Liberty, Art, -^ into the beams 
which search all sods where thoughts are repressed, and 
into constellations above, chanting to holier fires within 
that Real Presence which fills and thrills the Universe. 



AN OLD SHRINE 

The sun shone fair on old Canterbury on the day when 
the new Archbishop was to be consecrated; and on that 
morning I made my way to the little church of St. Martin, 
on the hill near the city. Thence I gazed over the ruin of 
the old Christian church, which was built on the preced- 
ing ruin of an ancient British temple, until my eye was 
fixed on the stately Cathedral. Time gradually drew its 
perspective about those towers, and they stood as Her- 
cules' Pillars at the end of a voyage of twelve centuries. 
But not even time can measure the vast distance between 
little St. Martin's here and the Cathedral there. Through 
what ages of sunshine and frost, by what waterings with 
tears and blood, did this small brown seed which Ethel- 
bert permitted to be planted in his kingdom expand to 
that great flower ! 

On this hill it was that Augustin the monk stood, medi- 



208 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

tating on the fate of the uncompromising Alban, his pre- 
decessor, — a fate for which he had no taste whatever. 
As he gazed on the old capital of the nation he had been 
sent to convert, a spirit hovered near him, and said, " AU 
these will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship 
me ! " Augustin cried, " Get thee beh — But stay ; who 
art thou?" "I am the chief deity worshipped by this 
people. Make me thy enemy, and thou shalt share the fate 
of Alban ; make me thy friend, and instead of this little 
hut, where the king permits thee to worship thy saints, 
thou shalt have over there a palace, and a gorgeous Ca- 
thedral, with a throne from which thou and thy succes- 
sors shall rule England." " Let us compromise," replied 
Augustin. " I cannot exactly and by name worship thee 
and thy fellow deities, but I will respect thy insignia and 
thy sacred days. My churches shall be twined with holly; 
they shall be built beside thy sacred wells, and near the 
holy oaks. Thy miracles and those of our saints will blend 
very naturally. In short, if thou and thy gods will only 
consent to be christened into new names, the change need 
be only so much as can be effected by a handful of wa- 
ter." The contract was signed, and Augustin had his 
throne and his Cathedral. Insignificant St. Martin's will 
not do for a Christ allied to Royalty. 

Since then the glacial centuries have moved on, each 
scratching a sign of its march on some stone of the build- 
ing yonder. 

The most notable spot in the Cathedral, to my mind, 
was one of which no one has been able to give any account. 
Canterbury was the place of splendid shrines, and religious 
history is full of the accounts of pilgrimages to them from 
all parts of the world. Of these, the most distinguished 
was that of St. Thomas a Becket, a mass of gold and 



AN OLD SHRINE 209 

gems. The great historic shrines have all their original 
positions well known, and in front of some of them are the 
marks of pilgrims' knees. But about none of these great 
shrines are such evidences of popular devotion as about 
the mysterious spot on one side ; of which there is no his- 
tory or trace except the pavement which pilgrims' knees 
have worn into hollows. Who was this unknown Grod? 
Had it been found necessary to invest a Christian Saint 
with the sanctity of some image of the native religion? 
Had Ethelbert's Queen, now St. Bertha, been costumed 
as a Madonna, because she bore the holiest name of the 
Saxon Mythology? 

Much applause has been awarded Gregory and Augus- 
tin for their method of borrowing for their Church the 
glories of paganism. It is claimed to be highly philosophi- 
cal to recognize the unities underlying various religions. 
But there is a difference between Philosophy and Jesuit- 
ism. AJban honestly saying — what Augustin believes as 
well — that the heathen deities are devils, is a nobler 
figure than the Jesuit in America commending Jesus to 
the savages as a chief who scalped one thousand of his 
enemies in a single day. 

If there were anything needed to make Augustin 
uglier in the matter, it is that he hardly fulfilled the con- 
ditions under which he secured the union of Church and 
State. Once on his throne, he seems to have overruled the 
popular worship as vigorously as he could, short of incur- 
ring any peril for himself like that which overtook Alban. 
Canterbury Cathedral, as established by him, must be 
looked upon as the first Conservatory built to secure for 
Christianity a habitat in the North, where no unimported 
element was friendly to it. Those who occupied his throne 
after he was dead did not regard it as necessary to be 



^10 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

bound by his shrewd contract with the existing deities. 
Some bits of the famous old windows and carvings still 
remain, to show with what beauty the Church saints looked 
down upon the people ; but in the crypt — copied, per- 
haps, from the walls of older periods — the grinning and 
deformed figures are still to be seen, each, probably, the 
representative to the newer pagan generation of some god 
of their forefathers. And this contrast between the saintly 
faces and the horrible bestialties physiognomically repre- 
sents the difference between the condition of their respect- 
ive adherents. Thenceforth, for the believer all that is 
good, for the heretic all that is bad. The land is divided 
among those who conform most aggressively, and they 
who conform not shall wear the bronze collars of the oth- 
ers. The succeeding generations can be more easily dealt 
with; for the priestly horror of any education but that 
which trains the neck for the priestly yoke was already 
in full vigour, and the very cradle-sides were made to 
teach that everlasting tortures by fire awaited all who 
should doubt or deny ; these lessons being also continually 
impressed by a practical anticipation of such fires for 
notorious heretics. On the other hand, for the implicit 
belief. Heaven, — its radiance reflected in the palaces and 
cathedrals it was competent to bestow in advance upon 
favourites. Poor Odin and Thor, now sadly out at elbows, 
were fairly put to shame. For that matter, they might, 
indeed, have claimed brotherhood with him in whose name 
they were exterminated ; but it was by no means a peas- 
ant befriending his fellow peasants, at the cost of cruci- 
fixion, who was talked of in England in those days, but a 
triumphant Prince, whose celestial glory and power over 
quick and dead gleamed upon the earth in the pomp of 
kings and in the swords and splendours of Crusaders, 



AN OLD SHRINE 211 

Templars, Hospitallers, and what not, who bore his ban- 
ner through the world. 

Such was Conservatory Number One. It was strongly 
built. The shrine, now nameless, which had proved such 
a powerful rival to those of imported saints, was removed. 
But a day came when the wind and weather beat in upon 
those of a Becket, of Dunstan, and the rest, and they too 
mouldered away. There is hardly any roof lower than the 
blue dome through which the elements will not find their 
way. An honest monk spake in Germany, and the golden 
shrines of Canterbury turned to ashes. The honest monk 
shuddered at what he had done, and was presently ready 
to join those who would rebuild the Conservatory anew ; 
but his mistake was in thinking it was his work. He 
merely summed up and named the composite work of a 
thousand years, in which German thought and Saxon 
honesty had honeycombed quite silently the Augustinian 
fabric. All the kings and priests, their horses and men, 
could not undo the work that had been done. 

Things must undergo many repairs in order to last, 
and with every repair something must perish. After look- 
ing at the grotesque images carved on capitals in the crypt, 
and concluding that their originals were Christian cari- 
catures of pagan deities, I passed a little way on, and saw 
much refuse, made by the workmen then engaged in re- 
pairing the building. The heaps presented an odd jumble. 
At one spot there were old pulpits, and old seats, and 
benches for kneeling. Who had spoken from the pulpits, 
and who had knelt ? Had one set of dogmas been uttered 
and heard, or had each successive pulpit known some 
" wing," — in its time high, hard, or broad ? One might 
suppose the figures of the pillars to be grinning their de- 
light on the heaps of rubbish on another side. Many poor 



212 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

saints, in whose interest they had been caricatured, were 
here piled in fragments, awaiting transfer to some dust- 
hole. The sandalled feet of one propped the nose and eyes 
of another; armless hands completed footless legs; and 
mitres, sceptres, cowls, crowns, swords had tumbled into 
a common confusion. Dust to dust! They were the pillars 
of the first Conservatory, the decorations of the second. 
What fragments a century of revolutions had spared, time 
had at length pulverized, and they must go to rest upon 
the dust of the gods they superseded, slowly forming the 
rock on which the next higher temple shall be built. 

For there was a Conservatory Number Two to be built 
for the exotic, which the toil of centuries had not been 
able to acclimatize. The materials of the old one could 
plainly not be used, save, as we have seen, for ornamental 
purposes, — as the castellated turrets, which once meant 
utility, still decorate mansions raised in an age of peace, 
or we follow as sports the serious occupations of savage 
life. The old weapons of the Church have been broken. 
Earthly government has found it necessary to mitigate 
some of the rigours of divine law. Hell-fires can no more 
be anticipated at Smithfield, nor the earthly heaven be 
secured to believers so absolutely as before. Nevertheless, 
there remains the power to urge all the more the terrors 
and rewards of the future, and — for these must grow 
weak — Society may still wield its ostracisms and distri- 
bute its advantages for the coercion of opinion. The 
Thirty-nine Articles shall mean many things, but one 
thing definitely shall they mean: thirty-nine pieces of 
money to him who shall betray Reason for them. To 
them shall be given the Keys of Knowledge, and only he 
shall enter the University who will lay down his independ- 
ence at the threshold. Every heretic shall see the differ- 



AN OLD SHRINE 213 

ence between his own and his orthodox neighbour's coffers. 
As for the clever young scholars, if they become restless 
under the task of believing the incredible, there shall be 
provided the chloroform of promotion and luxury, under 
which surgeries can be easily performed on the mind. 
Has any young theologian a tendency to doubt, or to 
write radical books ? Make him a Head Master, a Canon, 
a Dean, a Professor, or a Bishop. 

Thus it came to pass that, on the fourth day of Febru- 
ary, 1869, a great crowd of cultivated people sat together 
in Canterbury Cathedral — Conservatory Number Two 
of the Incredible Creed — to witness the consecration of 
a plain old Scotch gentleman to the task of presiding 
over the work of maintaining in Great Britain the wor- 
ship of a dead Jew. 

Before the white Gothic throne — the ancient one from 
which Augustin ruled within sight — I sat waiting. A 
buzz of gay conversation filled the building. Each clergy- 
man who entered was discussed ; the poor clergymen in 
seedy coats, their wives in old-fashioned bonnets, were 
greeted with titters. Bonnets, in proportion to their an- 
tiquity, retain their ancient power to render their wearers 
invisible to many. Some of these country faces were fresh 
as roses climbing on cottage doors ; about others hovered 
the faces of children whose love they had gained ; now 
and then some appeared on which were reflected the sad 
smiles of invalids over whom they had bent. There were 
signs that these and their husbands — they of the seedy 
coats — came from regions where the ministry of Christ 
still retains a meaning. These had not come for a picnic, 
like those whose mirth they excited. 

Gradually all became still ; the solemnity of the occa- 
sion wrought its effect, and we returned to our thoughts. 



214 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

An old window, refashioned out of the fragments of some 
older one, attracted my attention. It may have been that 
which is the last memorial of a Becket in the Cathedral. 
If so, he is in a very chaotic condition. A horse's head 
here, a human leg there, an old mitre linked on to a nose 
and chin, make a somewhat grotesque impression. While 
I was endeavouring to piece together St. Thomas again, 
the time arrived when the clergy should piece together 
all that remained of the broken materials that once went 
to the making of a real Archbishop of Canterbury. 

An old Gregorian chant is wafted to us from far away 
outside. A breathless stillness falls upon the multitude. 
The distant strain is very sweet; it may have been the 
very chant which Augustin and his monks sang as they 
marched from the seashore to Canterbury. At any rate, 
it came out of the sacred heart of a Past when faith was 
real; it was such music that built the walls of cathedrals, 
and its true refrain is in that music before which their 
walls are falling. 

The chanters now enter the building, where the organ 
takes up their strain, and the slow beat of the footsteps of 
the procession keeps time, — as it were, personating the 
march of centuries. The ecclesiastics enter, and among 
them the slightly bent but still stately old man — the 
centre now of all eyes — who is painfully going through 
his part. Two young men in full evening dress carry his 
train, which stretches some yards behind him. Could I be 
mistaken in thinking there was a shade of humiliation on 
his face? 

There was something sadly unreal about the whole 
aif air ; but where can the eye alight on anything in the 
religious world more real? 

When the ceremony was over, I went back to St Mar- 



AN OLD SHRINE 215 

tin's. The two most eminent Deans that Canterbury ever 
knew were there. They stood together, gazing silently on 
the window stained with a picture of St. Martin in the 
act of cutting his cloak in two to give half of it to the 
naked beggar crouching near his horse's head. 

While we were all sauntering about the diminutive 
building, a voice arrested our attention. A strange-look- 
ing man, with limp white cravat and threadbare coat, had 
got up into the little pulpit. His white locks fell about a 
face wrinkled with care, down upon his shoulders. His 
glittering eye held us as that of the Ancient Mariner did 
the Wedding Guest. Thus he spake : — 

" St. Martin's Church faces Canterbury Cathedral. The 
lowliness of the one and the grandeur of the other do not 
alone mark different eras of the English Church ; they 
mark two totally distinct religions. The one means the 
Saint who sacrifices his raiment for the needy ; the other 
means a Saint who sacrifices the needy to his raiment. 
What are our grand cathedrals, with their great revenues, 
but the rich, gold-embroidered cloaks of a Jewish peasant, 
whose position has in England become princely ? 

" I am a poor country clergyman, with a large family, and 
one hundred and fifty pounds a year. For thirty years I 
have bent shivering, like the beggar on the window there, 
near the door of a magnificent Cathedral. Before the altar 
of that Cathedral a Bishop — who has been unable to do 
any work for ten years — moulders away, awaiting the 
day when he shall be carved there in stone, when he will 
do as much good as he does now. Fifty people get their 
living out of the revenues of that Cathedral. They keep 
up a daily service for about twenty-five daily listeners. 
These attendants are from wealthy families in the neigh- 
bourhood, who have nothing else to do. The common 



216 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

people never go there. What can I see in that Cathedral 
but a great pile of loam in the centre of a barren field ? 
What could I not do for my own culture, for my own 
ability to serve, for the poor and ignorant around me, if 
the wealth of this useless heap were distributed for the 
religious advantage of the people ? As it is, what do I 
find under the shadow of those majestic towers? I will 
not speak of the daily anxiety, and the effort to make 
both ends meet ; nor of a certain happy girl who has faded 
into the pale and careworn mother who toils and suffers 
at my side. But there is the need of servility to the 
wealthy, who think themselves St. Martins if they throw 
us an occasional shilling; there is the parasite of igno- 
rance creeping over my children's minds; there is the 
subtle scepticism and despair deposited by each day in my 
own. 

" Yet a compensation has come, though late. I have been 
trained by sorrow to know that the religion of the Church 
is not the religion of him who, to those who cried, " Lord, 
Lord ! " — but left the naked unclothed and the hungry to 
starve, — replied, " I never knew you ! " I see the saint- 
liness of Martin well enough ; and I know that, were he 
now living and powerful, the sword which there passes 
through his velvet cloak would pass through and through 
every Cathedral and every big ecclesiastical salary in 
England, and the humanity of to-day would receive that 
which was bequeathed to it by the humanity of the past. 
I discern, with eyes sharpened by pain, that the faith of 
the past built cathedrals and splendid shrines because they 
believed them to be gateways of eternal salvation, and 
that they who now enjoy them do so without acknow- 
ledging the faith that built them. Is yonder great endow- 
ment to be administered in the letter or in the spirit ? If 



AN OLD SHRINE 217 

in the letter, it belongs to the Roman Catholics ; if in the 
spirit, it should be applied to those aims and ideas which 
constitute the real faith of the English people. The be- 
quest of the faith of one age cannot belong to that faith 
which another age has abjured. Do the English people 
believe in eternal hell-fire, in devils, in the potency of 
saints, without which no cathedral was ever yet built ? Do 
pilgrims swarm along the Old Kent Road as in Chaucer's 
day ? Amid the conflict of sects, the surgings of scepticism, 
the only shores of belief, as solid as that on which were 
built and endowed our cathedrals, are popular education, 
freedom of thought, political liberty, and the rescue of the 
masses from pauperism, disease, and vice. Therefore, 
though to me there is left only a weak arm and a feeble 
voice, the last effort of both shall be made here and now. 
To the Church I bid an eternal adieu. And it is given me 
to prophesy the end for which I cannot work — that a 
Spirit is advancing, which shall send those idle Cathedrals 
to follow their master in doing good ; which shall scatter 
the Archbishops* revenues and thrones and vestments as 
King Henry scattered the jewels and gold of a Becket's 
shrine ; and of all the grand establishments which the 
Universe has disestablished, not one stone shall be left 
upon another. The twelve centuries which to-day looked 
down from the towers of Canterbury, and saw the proud 
array of Bishops and Clergy, who leave the great causes 
and forget the heavy wrongs of the present to fulminate 
against stiff-necked Jews and defunct Pilates, shall be fol- 
lowed by an Age which shall look down from a loftier 
height upon Truth's golden harvests waving over the spots 
whereon they stand. All this I see, O my brothers, as this 
day I turn from the Church, with its splendid insignia, 
and come hither to begin anew the path of my ministry 



218 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

where tlie Church began — with the Saint dividing his 
cloak with the beggar." 

When the old clergyman had ceased, he tottered and 
nearly fell. The two Deans, who had been gazing on the 
stained windows, sprang forward and bore him to their 
own carriage, in which he was driven away. 

Sometimes I have thought that this scene, and the 
strange sermon, and the aged seer himself, must all have 
been a dream ; but, again, certain burdens of warning that 
have since issued from Canterbury and Westminster 
suggest that others besides myself must have been im- 
pressed on that occasion. 

ZAUBERPFEIFE 

DuKiNG the famous trial of Saurin v. Star and Kennedy, 
I went to watch the case in the interest of a silent and 
unrecognized party thereto. The incident of most interest 
to my client was this : on the production of a scapular 
in court, the Lord Chief Justice requested that it might 
be handed up for his inspection, confessing that he " did 
not know what a scapular was." Has it come to this ? 

Running through the European mythology one finds, 
in many variations, the legend of the magic music to whose 
measure all must keep step. From the falling of the walls 
of Jericho before the ram's horn of Joshua, or the rising 
of those of Thebes to the lyre of Orpheus, the old story 
passes to the magic horn with which Roland, at Ronces- 
valles, called his warriors from afar, or the flute by which, 
as he reappeared in fairy romance, he freed his lovely 
May-bird from the wicked enchantress. Adopted by 
Christianity in Germany, we find the magic pipe making 
the Jew dance among thorns until his wickedness is 



ZAUBERPFEIFE 219 

punished. And in England the same protean pipe is 
discovered sounding one of the first notes of Protestant- 
ism. "A mery Geste of the Frere and the Boye," first 
"emprynted at London in Flete-streete, at the sygne of 
the Sonne, by Wynkin de Worde," relates how the boy 
received, as one of three gifts, a pipe of magic power : — 

All that may the pipe here 
Shall not themselfe stere, 
But laugh and lepe about. 

This original '* Tom, Tom, the piper's son," did not confine 
his cunning instrument to making cows and milkmaids 
dance. He so wrought upon a Friar that he capered until 

he lost 

His cope and scapelary 
And all his other wede. 

"Was this profane lad but Henry the Eighth in disguise ? 
Was his pipe the bugle of Cromwell ? Whatever it may 
have been in history that made the English priest dance 
out of his cope and scapulary, we know what to-day re- 
presents the magic pipe, to whose sound all must move, 
and even mountains open, as they did before the Pied 
Piper of Hamelin. It is the steam-whistle. This it is 
to whose shrill, remorseless note the age goes burrowing, 
tunnelling, bridging oceans, soaring over Alps and Rocky 
Mountains. The great steam-shuttles weave races and 
nations together. Can a people who travel by steamships 
fall back to swimming on a log in their religion ? Men 
cannot for any great length of time be content to pass 
six days of the week in the Nineteenth Century and recur 
to the means and methods of the Year One on the seventh. 
The Lord Chief Justice does not know what a scapular is. 
Some successor of his will be equally at a loss about my 
Lord Chief Justice's Wig. And the dance must go on till 



220 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

scapular, wigs, and surplice shall all be found only in the 
Museum. 

Sharp, startling, by no means pleasant to the ear, is 
this steam-whistle, piercing through our quietest hour, 
invading our religious repose, dispelling slumber. It is, 
at present, too close to us. Only in its far echoes can we 
hear its softened tones ; there its notes are spiritualized 
to the sounds they must bear to the ear of the future, 
when it shall be said, Happy were they who dwelt near 
the fountains of those strains that built our hundred- 
gated civilization ! Noises reach not so far as music. The 
horns of Oberon, of Roland, called men to war and dis- 
may ; but the struggles have passed away, and to us those 
horns bring only gentle and prophetic strains. 

So pipe on, pitiless engineer! Assiduous thou only to 
clear thy track, and bring certain bales and freights safe 
to yonder mart ; but even now, to the wild echoes thou 
hast set flying, the very dust marches into shapes of 
beauty. Above the bass of Commerce is the clear tenor 
of Fraternity. Lo, there is a music on the air, as of the 
breaking of millions of chains! From Italy, Russia, 
America, Spain, the echoes return in the happy voices of 
liberated hearts and homes. The dragons crawl away to 
their caverns. This one generation, with its vulgar steam- 
whistle, has witnessed the vanishing of more shadows 
from the earth, has seen more men and women disen- 
thralled, more rays of intellectual light shed abroad upon 
mankind, than any ten generations which have preceded 
it; and, ere it ceases, that shrill signal shall swell to the 
trump of the Last Judgment, bring to the bar of Human- 
ity every creed or institution of the earth. 



BUNHILL FIELDS 221 



BUNHILL FIELDS 



Under the gray October sky I started fortli to witness 
the formal reopening of Bunhill, or Bone-Hill, Cemetery. 
I passed by the spot where Cromwell after death hung 
on the gallows ; by the old fields where the martyrs died, 
but where now the stately market stands; by the house 
where Milton was born, possibly by that where he hid 
himself from the wrath of the Restoration. "Milton, thou 
shouldst have lived to see this hour," when my Lord 
Mayor, and my Lord Shaftesbury, and members of Par- 
liament, and noted Clergymen, are coming together to 
compete for the best eulogy and profoundest homage to 
the men whom their predecessors hunted to their graves. 
Around the vacant space in the centre of the great 
city huge factories stood roaring at their work. Their 
brick walls and big signs frowned upon the vacant ground, 
seeming to say, "Why is this waste? This parcel of 
ground, with its idle gravestones, might at this moment 
be coining millions of pounds." But the commerce of 
London, surging up against the confines of the silent 
field, was there restrained as by a spell. Commerce had 
indeed made an effort to appropriate that ground, but 
had heard the command, Thus far and no farther. The 
religious hearts of England had gathered round it, and 
formed a sacred circle which no pecuniary interests could 
overpass. And the silence of this field loudest chanted 
the requiem of those whose bones moulder in it. For here 
rest men and women who, while living, similarly with- 
stood those potent interests which recoil before their dust, 
when self-interest said to them, Sell us your souls; do 
not stand by a faith which brings you only a crust of 



222 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

bread; give up those idle visions wHcli are carrying you 
into prisons; take sides with us, and we will load your 
tables with plenty! The sacred circle in their breasts, 
whose walls did not then fall before such interests, finds 
its fit monument in the silent sanctity of Bunhill Fields, 
and in the sentiment which still finds something more 
useful than gold. The Unitarian Lord Mayor, the Non- 
conformist Member of Parliament, and the Nobleman of 
the Church of England, utter in accord the homage of 
the hour. Not one of them, it may be, believes the dog- 
mas of Wesley, or Watts, or George Fox, or Lardner, or 
Defoe, or Bunyan ; yet alike they bow before these mighty 
shades. For it is only in the present, where personal in- 
terests or prejudices are affected, that men raise their 
little creeds above essential nobleness and moral grandeur. 
The ceremony was over. About one tomb especially the 
crowd gathered. On it lay the carved figure of John Bun- 
yan. On one side is a picture of the pilgrim with his staff 
toiling under his burden ; on the other, the burden has 
rolled off as he clasps the foot of the cross. It bears an 
inscription showing that it has been of late repaired under 
the presidency of an Earl whom I need not name. The 
same nobleman was good enough to patronize the Pilgrim 
in his address on the same day ; he called the old tinker, 
with gracious familiarity, " a glorious old fellow." One 
was forced to reflect how different he was from the Earls 
who in old times conceived that the best place for Bunyan 
was Bedford Jail. When the nobleman left I was fain to 
follow him, and the first thing he did was to pick up a 
hard stone and fling it at a man walking a little before 
him. The man turned : could I believe my eyes ? — it was 
John Bunyan ! The noble lord not only stoned this pil- 
grim, but called on the clergymen around him to do the 



BUNHILL FIELDS 223 

same ; and many of them did so. Wounded, the poor man 
went on his way, until, at last, he fainted. I followed, and 
asked him his name ; but even as I did so, though the 
likeness to Bunyan remained, I saw that it was a certain 
heretical Bishop. 

Returning again to the sepulchre garnished with the 
nobleman's name, with his denunciations of those who 
stoned the prophets of England still ringing in my ears, I 
sat down, alone now, before the tomb. " Alas ! " I cried, 
" can men see the true and great only when their names 
are traced in dust ? Shall we forever go on raising the 
crosses of the past over our churches, and crucifying the 
sacred causes of to-day ? It is easy to praise the Bunyans 
of three centuries ago ; but how about their true brothers 
whom we meet in the street.^ When the Son of Man 
Cometh, shall he find faith in the earth ? or would not the 
very men who now worship his name crucify him, even as 
they crucify every sacred human cause which represents 
him?" 

The lips of the stone figure seemed to smile with their 
old serenity, and the voice said, with a meaning gathered 
out of the intervening centuries, " Steadily believe con- 
cerning the things that are invisible." 

I listened for some further word. Whether it was the 
whispering of the wind, or the hum of looms, or fancy's 
coinage of the voices in the street, it seemed as if there 
came to me, as I sat there, these words : — 

"Yes, steadily believe and endure as seeing the invis- 
ible. There never was heroism, nor martyrdom, nor saintly 
devotion, which is not now discoverable in every part of the 
earth. Their sacred camp is ever near. Where the scholar 
is devoting his life to rescue the weak and ignorant ; where 
the thinker gives his hand to the undowered cause of a 



224 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

hated truth ; where the man of Science follows Nature 
with a faithful love, which refuses to divide its loyalty 
with superstition, whatever the bribe ; where in loneliness, 
with courage and devotion, the gifted and the true are 
pursuing, amid doubt and misgiving, over crag and tor- 
rent, the Truth that has called to them, — there, be thou 
sure, are Bunyans, and Miltons, and Knoxes, and the next 
pilgrims in the procession of faithful souls that can never 
end. But do thou hasten hence. Not by the kissing of 
their bones, or the garnishing of their tombs, or the be- 
lieving of their creeds, can the brave and free be honoured ; 
but by an independence and fidelity like their own. He is 
most like Christ who stands as bravely before his Church 
(so called) as Christ did before the conventional creeds of 
his day. Rise and go hence ; seek not to live by substi- 
tuting for virtue of your own the praises of others' virtues ; 
borrow not their oil for your lamp ; heed thine own aim." 



AN ENGLISH SINAI 

Englishmen are still fumbling about Mount Sinai in the 
East. Even from the noon of the nineteenth century it is 
only through a perspective of six thousand years that men 
can see the summits where, amid smoke and flame, the 
laws of God are published. Yet Mount Sinai were a hil- 
lock but for the man that stood thereon ; and wherever a 
right and true man stands, there the earth rises heaven- 
ward, and the world trembles under the touch of God. 

The road by which the Pilgrim sought his Sinai lay 
across the lonely heath that stretches toward the little vil- 
lage of Christchurch. Lonely as it was, he felt himself, 
journeying thither, but the next in a procession of those 



AN ENGLISH SINAI 225 

who, in ages past and present, had found something to 
attract them through those barren fields. Into the sea 
stretches Hengistbury Head, where, in early days, Saxon, 
Dane, and Roman successively landed, and build fortresses 
from which they sallied forth to conquer and rule the land 
— each to disappear in due time, leaving some contribu- 
tion of blood or power to be wrought into the character 
and laws of this people. 

By many a superstition is this old region haunted. In 
the distance rises St. Catherine's Hill. There, where the 
chapel of that Saint stood, the ghosts of the old pagans 
buried in surrounding mounds were wont, it was said, to 
throng, seeking to be shriven, and so rescued from pur- 
gatory. Legend also says that it was originally intended 
to build Christchurch on that hill, but after the materials 
had been carried thither they were borne at night by in- 
visible agents to the spot where the church now stands. 
In the course of building a beam was found too short, 
and it was miraculously lengthened. This beam was left 
uncovered, in order that the worshippers might see it, 
until very lately. The great square tower is a landmark 
in the distance, and as one approaches it the barren heath 
spreads into the green meadows that fringe the course of 
the Avon, which, having passed the homes of Sidney and 
Herbert, the altars of Stonehenge, and the soaring spire 
of Salisbury, has become serene in its silvery solitude, as 
it reflects the old church borne to its banks by the more 
silent stream of Time. For many generations are traced 
in its various architecture. The finest part is Norman, 
and has externally a beautiful lattice-work in stone, and 
a carved representation of cottage tiles. These architec- 
tural characters bear us back to the origin of cathedrals. 
In early times the rich could have in their castles or man- 



226 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

sions each his private chapel or oratory ; but the poor must 
needs combine their humble means to provide a temple 
for them all, worthy the holy ones they adored. But this 
building which held their common shrines and altars was 
at first but a larger cottage, with the same roof-tiles and 
lattices as the humble dwellings around it. The dormer 
windows of the cottage are still preserved in the steeple, 
which is the roof elongated so as to be a guide for pil- 
grims or wayfarers to the sacred home which was for all. 
But cathedrals have so long been separated from the life 
of the poor, — their significant signs have so long been 
mere architectural ornaments, — that those for whom they 
were originally built can no longer recognize any thread 
connecting their homes with them. The sexton of Christ- 
church explained that the tile-work was probably meant 
to imitate fish-scales! The internal construction of the 
cathedral means just as little to the worshippers ; the nave 
is no more a navis, or ark of safety, the transept no more 
a hedge separating the sacred from the profane. Wher- 
ever these are now built, they are artificial ruins. 

The old reredos at Christchurch represents the pedigree 
of Jesus and the adoration of the Magi. Beneath is Jesse 
asleep : out of his loins grows a tree whose many branches 
curve into niches for the reputed ancestors of Christ. In 
the centre the mother reclines, upholding the infant, before 
whom the Wise Men, and with them a crowned King, are 
prostrate. From the time when the moral grandeurs of 
the earth were represented in the bending of Scholarship 
and Royalty before the peasant who bore about him only 
spiritual splendours, pass we over many ages to the mod- 
ern part of Christchurch, which holds the shrine we are 
seeking, — the monument of Shelley. There, beside the 
fatal boat, his head supported also by a faithful Mary, lies 



AN ENGLISH SINAI 227 

the scholar who would not bow to the one before whom his 
ancient brothers came from the East to bend. His face 
finds in this marble the repose which the world decreed 
he should only attain in death. Perhaps it is because the 
ancient positions of the holy child and the king are now 
reversed, and the knees of the Church-Christ have become 
quite supple before aristocratic privilege, that the most 
notable object in this Christian Cathedral is the memorial 
of one on whom, while living, the Christian world shrieked 
out curses. He who replied to such curses that he had 
rather be damned with Plato than saved with those who 
anathematized him, has here his cenotaph among those 
whose only records are that they died under the blessing 
of the Church. In this old haunt of superstition its direst 
foe has his monument ! Should this marble form, in the 
soft twilight, throb with the life and consciousness of Shel- 
ley, possibly he would not feel any nearer to the symbols 
around him, but rather prefer the old persecution to the 
homage secured by the potency of a baronet's demand. 

Indeed, a modern Spiritist might easily suppose that 
the phantom of Shelley had been already at work in the 
choir, where old carvings represent a fox in the guise of a 
priest preaching to a flock of geese ; a farmer praying 
while a solemn dog laps his bowl of milk behind him ; and 
a king and a priest conspicuous in hell. At any rate, we 
may be sure that these were carved by the Shelley princi- 
ple in Nature ; and such ornaments in the church of the 
eleventh century implied an infidel's memorial in that of 
the nineteenth century. Yet, could he walk these old 
aisles, uncongenial as he might find all his contemporary 
environments, the poet might bring with him a perception 
of a subtle relationship to those whose aspirations built 
the gray walls, and to those who, from windows passion- 



228 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

ate with heavenly light, look with warm glances upon his 
pale marble. 

The poet, says Schiller, is the son of his time. The poets 
who appeared on the horizon in the earlier part of this 
century were not the morning stars of the new era, but 
rather the fiery shapes about an era going down in blood. 
Of them one alone from the evening star of a setting is 
recognizable as the morning star of a rising day. By his 
side is Byron, in whom the ages of egotism reach their 
final flower and perish ; with Shelley comes the first streak 
of the day of Humanity. The one will have his private 
sorrow ride him like a wild foaming steed driven by a 
demon ; the other will have his grief spring up in human 
sympathy, his wrong signify every man's right. 

Were our Sciences equal to rightly reporting the embry- 
ology of Shelley, many a phenomenon in the present men- 
tal and moral condition of England would be made plain. 
A magician in his Field Place nursery dressing up his sis- 
ters as demons to obey his potent wand ; an alchemist in 
Sion School experimenting to find the elixir of life ; a prac- 
titioner of the Black Art at Eton — where as yet Chem- 
istry is a prohibited study — engaged, as he confesses to 
the terrified tutor, in " raising the Devil " ; a mysterious 
boy who will not fag, and has that young world crying at 
his heels, " There goes mad Shelley ! " a lover already, 
and writing with the beloved the romance of " Zastrozzi," 
— he has drawh some drop of sap from every stratum of 
superstition beneath his feet, and passes them by swift 
transmutation to the incipient radicalism which breaks 
the shell at Oxford and walks forth a horror to students 
and professors. 

There follows a prelude of ominous dreams. Oxford 
consists at the time of a number of professors who are 



AN ENGLISH SINAI 229 

busy milking a veteran and barren cow for students who 
assiduously hold a sieve for pail. Their labours are sus- 
pended for a moment by the apparition of a young gen- 
tleman, son of a Member of Parliament, who goes about 
cursing the King, denying the existence of God, and pre- 
dicting the extraction of food for the millions from air 
and water, the instantaneous communication of thoughts 
over any distances, and the universal travelling by air. It 
is not, of course, a long work to put this wild creature on 
a stage-coach, and send him off, before proceeding to work 
with the heifer and the sieve again. It is true that the 
laws have prematurely decided that an Oxonian shall not 
be burnt for writing an atheistic tract, but there still re- 
main exile from college, exile from a father's house, and 
exile from the heart that is nearest. 

Now let us raise our thanks to those who alone never 
fail us, — the blind conservatives ; to the professors who 
gave us a prophet whom they might have made into a 
metaphysical bookworm ; to Miss Harriet Grove, who 
resigned us her lover to be the lover of mankind ; to Sir 
Timothy Shelley, M. P., who enabled us to get out of his 
proposed politician a champion of Humanity. It makes 
one tremble to think that Shelley was once a baronet's 
son, under the roof of Oxford, at an age when, as in so 
many other cases, the Spirits might have been whispered 
out of him ! How much we owe to Scholastic stupidity can 
be especially appreciated by a generation which has seen 
a Prime Minister, long dwarfed under the spell of Oxford, 
released by its suicidal simplicity, rising to a stature 
knightly enough to grapple with the greatest ecclesiasti- 
cal wrong of his country, and to raise the flag of rational- 
ism over the Episcopal Bench ! Yes, Oxford, — thou dull 
whetstone of Saladin scimitars, — in our praise to Con- 



230 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

servatism, the great nether stone of the mills of God, we 
cannot forget thee until thou also shalt be ground exceed- 
ing small ! 

Shelley, said Leigh Hunt, seemed like a spirit that had 
darted from its orb and found itself in another planet. 
" He was pious toward Nature, toward his friends, toward 
the whole human race, toward the meanest insect of the 
forest." " I never knew such an instinct of veneration," 
says Hogg. Robert Browning has described Shelley's po- 
etry as " a sublime fragmentary essay toward a present- 
ment of the correspondency of the Universe to the Deity." 
This was the man for whom Oxford had nothing but a 
curse ! This was the " atheist " for whom the England that 
adored George the Fourth as the finest gentleman in 
Europe could furnish no home! Such reverence, wonder, 
worship, never before or since fed with their sacred oil a 
purer spirit; he ascended bravely the smoking mount, 
and returned to the calf-worshippers below with the light 
of eternity on his face, and they knew him not ! 

Shelley was the first-born of a generation of souls com- 
missioned to revolutionize the thought and faith of Eng- 
land. After him there was a Shelley in every sane man 
born of an English mother, and the siege against Super- 
stition began, never to be raised. The tragedy of Shelley's 
life was the warning of the Church to all who should ever 
attempt to think freely and bravely. It was a proclama- 
tion of piracy against every barque that should cast its 
old moorings and sail the seas with God. His life was 
never lived ; it was scattered like bits of some exquisite 
mosaic never pieced together. They alone know the splen- 
did design who can carry out in imagination, and colour 
with the pigments of their own hearts, the great forms 
suggested by the fragments of his song and his life. Such 



AN ENGLISH SINAI 231 

— so has our Christendom steadily declared — such, so 
outlawed and ruined, shall be every life which is hurled 
against us and our dogmas. Do we require more lamenta- 
tions over " Lost Leaders," more recantations in Scotland 
or Cambridge, more humiliations before Convocation, to 
prove how potent is the threat ? Bend or be broken ! is 
still the word of the Church to the scholar yearning for 
his ideal life ; live the life, think the thought we prescribe, 
or perish with all your hopes unfulfilled around you ! 

But, sad and fragmentary as was his life, it shines out 
like a rainbow above those who have surrendered. Beside 
their finest embroidered ensigns we lift this strip torn by 
shot and shell from the banner of a great cause, and know 
that there is still room for the lilies to blossom upon it. 
Lo, beneath the tattered life and name and work of 
Shelley let the scholars of this day gather, and take 
their oath of knighthood. What part has a scholar with 
the savage creed that wears the scalp of Shelley at its 
belt ? What place has he in the assembly of those who 
count the belief in an angry, jealous, arbitrary Jehovah 
to be pious, and call the aspiration which soars above the 
idols of fools atheism ? Why should the man of culture 
exclude from his social circle the man who talks bad 
grammar, or dismiss the servant who believes in witches, 
but welcome the surpliced or kid-gloved believer in hells, 
devils, and Balaam's talking ass ? The scholar is not the 
retained advocate of the party that pays best. He is not 
the attorney for commerce, nor the professional casuist of 
those who would combine the advantages of convention- 
ality with those of simple truth. Better he should again 
be a hermit than dwell in society at the cost of honour. 
As yet, alas, though subtle as the serpent, our Scholarship 
has also its double tongue, uttering now that which is true, 



232 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

next that which is sordid. From the day when Shelley- 
was banished from Oxford, no scholar has remained under 
the flag of the common Christianity save through a visible 
servility. But it is spiritual perjury! If we demand that 
the banker shall be honest in money matters, that the 
soldier shall be brave, that the judge shall be just, shall 
we be satisfied that he who is consecrated to Reason shall 
weakly or meanly part its sacred raiment among those 
who would feign trick out their lucrative creeds or cus- 
toms with its divine sanctions ? 

Shelley brought the Orthodoxy of England to its 
Judgment Day, Up to his time there were great and 
honest scholars in the Churches; but the cruelty, the 
coarseness, the ignorance inherent in those Churches was 
then revealed, the falsehood was exposed ; and only by 
some kind of bribery, conscious or unconscious, can any 
genius or real culture be found there longer. We ought 
to be able to depend upon the honour of the Scholar not 
to compromise the purity of the light he is set to feed and 
guard. There is needed a Scholar's caste, removed from 
the world of Self-seekers ; a brotherhood of those whose 
verdict is the dictate of absolute reason and rectitude ; 
the fraternity of those who, amid a world that weighs 
eternal verities in their relation to gold and fashion, stead- 
ily say, " Unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou 
united ! " 

We have lived long since Shelley's time ; the brave 
thinker finds many a warm hand to clasp his where the 
exiled poet found but few, and those the hands of fellow 
exiles ; but superstition still reigns over the conventional 
world : it is cruel as ever ; and he can hardly be sure that 
he has fought the good fight, and kept his trust, who does 
not feel that he has read a chapter of his own experience 



THE REJECTED STONE 233 

in the life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and drunk of the cup 
of which he drank. For, though no man knoweth his grave 
unto this day, he saw God face to face, and brought upon 
the tables of a broken heart the laws of those called out 
of spiritual bondage. 

THE REJECTED STONE 

Some years ago I was wont to repair on Sunday morn- 
ings to Smithfield to hear the orators of the open air dis- 
course on the great problems of these times. There is no 
theory or heresy conceivable by the human mind which 
was not ventilated on that hallowed acre. No eloquence 
that I could find in any Church seemed to me comparable 
with the rudest speech of these unkempt infidels, who 
showed what fruit stakes of wood, quickened by fires fed 
with human blood, may bear after some generations. The 
butchers who now occupy that spot never hewed and 
hacked meat more cleverly than their predecessors cut up 
dogmas ; and the market hardly compensates for the loss 
of this unroofed cathedral, or furnishes more genuine food 
for the body than was then dealt out to the mind of the 
artisan. But its worshippers betook themselves to the 
parks and squares. Here, however, they were interrupted ; 
the police were empowered to make them "move on." 
One Sunday morning I saw in one of the open spaces a 
man walking backward, pursued, apparently, by a mob, 
in whose faces he was shaking his fists. Drawing near, I 
found that it was a street speaker and his audience ful- 
filling the condition of moving on. Thus for a year or so 
they moved, until the new railway arches at St. Pancras 
were built ; under these the preachers, lecturers, and dis- 
putants are now permitted to collect themselves and their 



234 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

thoughts. There I have followed them, and listened 
through many a summer evening to such wisdom as can 
alone lift up its voice in the streets. 

A few orthodox preachers appear on the scene, to pray 
and sing and utter the old inducements of future woe 
and bliss ; but they bring their listeners with them ; and 
it is a performance of actors too poor to have engage- 
ments, with the cast-off scenery of regular establishments, 
and hardly excites more than the smile of those who pass 
by to attend the real attractions of the place. As one ap- 
proaches, he might fancy that he had got into a court- 
yard of Bedlam. A confused din of voices coming from 
the centres of contiguous groups, each struggling with 
the other in the air, pelts the wayfarer like a consistency 
of rain, snow, and hail. But let one stop and take heed ; 
he will find himself at a focus in the whispering gallery 
of the world. There is no question discussed in the great 
Universities, or Church Councils, or Parliaments but is 
discussed here. 

On a certain night I stood for an hour between three 
groups, one of which was discussing the authority of the 
Catholic Church, the second the miracles, the third the 
existence of God. Archbishop Manning never urged a 
stronger argument for the necessity of a Church author- 
ized to interpret the Bible than was there uttered by one 
of the poorest of his flock. "You admit the authority of 
the Bible as the word of God?'' he asked of his antagonist. 
— "Certainly." — "But you say every man must put his 
own interpretation upon it?" — "I do." — "Now, suppose 
a lawyer were to go before a Court of Law with a case, and 
claim the right to put his own interpretation on the laws of 
England, what would the Judge say to him? He would 
say, Sir, these laws have been interpreted by our Courts 



THE REJECTED STONE 235 

before you were born. I have got to follow the precedents. 
I can't set my own private opinions, much less yours, 
against the former decisions of this Court. And if it has 
been found necessary to establish Courts to interpret the 
laws of England, is it not just as necessary to have an 
authority to interpret the laws of God ? " 

While the poor Protestant was fumbling about for his 
reply to this I gave heed to the assailer of miracles. 
" Why don't they happen now?" he cried. "Because the 
time of miracles is past. They were needed to call the 
attention of the people to Christianity then. Well, are n't 
they needed to support Christianity now? John Stuart 
Mill don't believe it, Professor Huxley don't believe it, 
the foremost men of this age don't believe it. There are 
thousands on thousands of people in London who pay no 
attention to it. Now, you just raise to life out of the 
graveyard one of our dead children in the name of Christ, 
and the churches won't remain empty." Such was the 
echo of Strauss, of Parker, of Renan, which found its 
way through the lips of an artisan in patched clothes. 
But the largest crowd was gathered around one who was 
fiercely denying the existence of God. " If there is a God, 
why are you permitted to suffer? Why do ignorance, 
crime, and wrong run riot through the land? What 
would any man among you do if he were omniscient and 
omnipotent? Would he not be found in every home of 
misery and want and sickness, relieving distress, restoring 
health ? Would he not remove from the world tyranny, 
ignorance, and sin? Are we to suppose that there is an 
omnipotent God who does n't show as much benevolence 
toward his creatures as a man would who had the same 
power ? Look at the earthquakes that swallow men up like 
flies," — and so on, with much more of the same sort. 



236 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

Here were the sheep ; where were the shepherds ? Chant- 
ing empty services to emptier pews ; standing beside their 
cold altars and crying, Ho, all ye that hunger, come and 
hear us read about bread that was sown, harvested, and 
eaten in ancient Palestine. 

Seest thou these great temples ? There shall not be left 
of them one stone upon another which shall not be cast 
down. Their builders have rejected the stone which ever- 
more breaks to its own measure all that falls upon it, 
which grinds to powder that upon which it falls. The oath 
of the Universe is pledged that only that shall stand 
which has for its corner-stone Man. Amid cathedrals 
built for the splendour of Popes or the glorification of 
God, institutions raised on the assumption that the people 
were made for them, not they for the people, dogmas 
holding the human heart and reason fit sacrifices for them, 
the steadfast forces of Fate have quarried from the re- 
jected instincts and necessities of the masses that rude 
block lying in the mud at St. Pancras which shall one day 
be recognized as the corner-stone on which alone any 
temple can rest securely. The Voices at St. Pancras are 
not the voices of ignorant working people ; they are, to 
those that can receive it, the voices of Elias, of half-clad 
John in the Wilderness, which must first come. Only 
before one who, in conformity with human nature, can 
increase, can their fatal negations decrease. 

The worship of the Nazarene peasant and carpenter has 
its Avatar to-day in the interest gathering about the little 
and the lowly. At last an age has arrived which begins to 
understand the secret revealed to St. Augustin, that " God 
is great in the great, but greatest in the small." 

First came Science, the one true representative of the 
Apostolic Succession in this age, reversing all estimates 



THE REJECTED STONE 237 

of higli and low. Studious rather of actual flies than of 
possible angels ; turning from the infinite to search into 
the infinitesimal ; finding the philosopher's stone in every 
pebble ; circumnavigating the raindrop and reporting its 
curious tribes ; pursuing insects as ardently as suns ; read- 
ing in flowers the laws of constellations; tracing the 
bursting of cosmical rings and the generation of worlds in 
a spinning drop of oil ; exploring primeval forests in frost- 
pictures on window-panes; following each step in the 
ascent of the worm to man ; showing the consent of solar 
systems to the motion of a finger, — Science has come to 
this generation wearing on its head the dust, and has 
taught us to see in that dust a crown more glorious than 
ever adorned the brow of Eoyalty. 

Next came Poetry, turning at last from the emptiness 
of the glittering to the treasures of the leaden casket: 
Burns, and the " wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower " dis- 
turbed by his plough; Wordsworth, with his reflector 
turned to the field, holding a celandine ; Hood, setting to 
sweet minors the sighs of the sempstress ; Leigh Hunt and 
Keats, competing as laureates of the cricket and the grass- 
hopper ; Carlyle, rising to song once, as the moth found 
its pyre in his candle ; Goethe, twining the mystical ten- 
drils of souls about the little Gypsy Mignon ; Browning, 
telling of the destinies of empires bound up with the carols 
of the barefooted Pippa from the silk-mills ; the tender 
humanities of B^ranger, of Lowell, of Whittier, and of 
Walt Whitman, who shows the Leaves of Grass as fit 
subjects for his epic as Homer found for his the Heroes 
of Troy. 

The whole transcendental movement of New England, 
which gave to America its only distinctive literature, which 
sketched its ideal in Brook Farm communities and realized 



238 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

it in the abolition of Slavery, unfolded beneath the breath 
of the Seer of Concord, who knew — 

There is no great, there is no small, 
To the Soul that maketh all ; 
And where it goeth all things are, 
And it goeth everywhere. 

I am not unmindful that the chief Minnesinger of our 
time still dresses his Muse in court costume, and still re- 
hearses to charmed drawing-rooms the deeds of kings and 
knights ; nor that those he has inspired are more listened 
to as they sing of the Medeas, Atalantas, and Tristrams, 
than Clough lingering with the peasant dance amid the 
heather, or AUingham and Barnes, whose morning-glories 
climb on cottage-doors, or Robert Buchanan setting the 
footfalls along the Strand to melody. But may not the 
drawing-rooms be under an illusion about their favourites ? 
As the Pre-Raphaelists, seeking an extinct Art, ploughed 
the furrows of an Art to come ; as Culture, recoiling from 
vulgar comradeship, travels eastward till it gets westward, 
— even so, by many blind ways, even those most anti- 
quarian, the dream of Poetry leads to the one Shrine. 
Tennyson will voyage with Ulysses, rather than with 
Paddy on his emigrant ship ; but at last on Californian 
sands they will sit together, and see the old world with 
the same distrust, and say, " "We will return no more ! " 
That which has enabled Tennyson to touch the heart of 
his age is the degree to which he has represented its vague 
and profound scepticism. Subtly interfused with nearly 
every poem he has written is the spirit he has received 
from the popular unrest, the moral misgiving and intel- 
lectual doubt, whose waves are steadily drowning all that 
cannot float. The Woman's Rights Reformers find their 
texts in " The Princess '' ; and " In Memoriam " is the 



THE REJECTED STONE 239 

sustaining air for all Left Wings. The secularist lecturer 
takes from the "Lotus-Eaters" his burden against the 
present, and from " The Two Voices " his curtain against 
the future. Vainly will men fight their shadows. Carlyle 
is still compelled to further the human equality he made 
necessary when he tore crowns of painted paper in pieces ; 
Father Newman stands powerless before the Frankenstein 
of Rationalism he conjured up. The Spirit of the Age is 
the divinity that shapes our ends, and cares little for our 
rough-hewing of the same ; it can allow seeming reactions 
and illusive eccentricity; for, whatever tacks the ships 
may make, its magnet is hid near every compass, and will 
bring them all to one port at last. 

The novelist, — the real preacher of our times, — once 
minding only high things, now aspires to things of low 
estate. The romance of the past gathered about the castles 
and mansions of the great, and sought the company of 
lords and ladies. But these are now left to penny novels 
read by ambitious domestics, incurious concerning their 
own familiar lot. The romances which have really made 
an impression on this age have been those which have had 
for their themes the operatives of factories, the artisan 
radical, the dens of Field Lane, the Toilers of the Sea or 
Les Miser ahles of France, or the poor Uncle Toms of the 
Plantation. The success of Charles Dickens is the most 
significant literary phenomenon before us. This graduate 
of Fleet Street has woven the haunts of wretchedness and 
sin in London into a texture of pathos, humour, and 
beauty. No one can walk those streets with the same eyes 
as before, since he plunged into their turbid life and 
emerged with hands laden with pearls, — pearls from the 
hearts of thieves and outcasts. There is a divine sparkle 
in every heap of rubbish. It is as if our coal-dust should 



240 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

crystallize to diamonds. Humanity, forgetting the fine 
people of Walter Scott and Bulwer, turned to acknow- 
ledge a debt to this figure-head of London deeper than is 
due to aU the sermonizers around him. Not the Churches, 
but him, we thank for the brightest rays that shine with 
Christmas mornings. Children unconsciously twine the 
laurels of their happier life about the brow which has 
laughed Squeers with his ferule out of existence, and 
caused the flowers of gladness to bloom along their paths, 
so long blighted by Puritanism : Chadband and Stiggins 
read on their merry faces a reign of terror, others the ra- 
diance of a new era in our civilization. And when at last 
that grave lay open in the ancient Abbey, to close at last 
upon some part of all of us, and the people and their chil- 
dren came and heaped it with flowers, each flower was a 
symbol of the fragrance, the tints innumerable, which had 
bloomed at his touch out of lives and hearts that were 
dead, through him made alive again. 

Lastly, what has been the history of Art in England ? 
With splendid antecedents, from decorating Southern 
palace and cathedral with gorgeous tableaux. Art came 
hither to suffer a decline graduated according to the lib- 
eration of the people from the past it expressed, up to the 
day when a particularly English Parliament ordered the 
finest pictures in the country to be burnt. No longer to 
be dragged at the wheels of the most exquisite of chariots 
is this unromantic Englishman ; he will betake him to the 
driving of his own ugly cab. How shall the flower thrive 
when the stem is broken? The Englishman had utterly 
lost the faith which had culminated in the art of Raphael, 
concerning whom he cried. Away with your Madonnas ! 
give us your fat naked women instead of them! So 
Raphael, and the long line of post-Raphaelists, gave those 



THE REJECTED STONE 241 

mixtures of paint and patriotism, of figment and pig- 
ment, which passed here for high art, until the true 
prophet of English Art came ; meek and lowly he came, 
riding on an ass ! 

But at this point of our pilgrimage we reach the house 
of an Interpreter, at whose feet we may well sit in silence 
for a space. 

Near the southwest corner of Covent Garden, a square 
brick pit or well is formed by a close-set block of houses, 
to the back windows of which it admits a few rays of 
light. Access to the bottom of it is obtained out of Maiden 
Lane, through a low archway and an iron gate ; and if 
you stand long enough under the archway to accustom 
your eyes to the darkness, you may see on the left hand a 
narrow door, which formerly gave access to a respectable 
barber's shop, of which the front window, looking into 
Maiden Lane, is still extant, filled in this year (1860) 
with a row of bottles, connected in some defunct manner 
with a brewer's business. A more fashionable neighbour- 
hood, it is said, eighty years ago than now, — never, cer- 
tainly, a cheerful one, — wherein a boy being born on St. 
George's Day, 1775, began soon after to take interest in 
the world of Covent Garden, and put to service such spec- 
tacles of life as it afforded. No knights to be seen there, 
nor, I imagine, many beautiful ladies ; their costume at 
least disadvantageous, depending much on incumbency of 
hat and feather, and short waists ; the majesty of men 
founded similarly on shoe-buckles and wigs ! . . . " Bello 
ovile dov' io dormii agnello " : of things beautiful, besides 
men and women, dusty sunbeams up or down the street 
on summer mornings; deep-furrowed cabbage-leaves at 
the greengrocer's ; magnificence of oranges in wheelbar- 
rows round the corner, and Thames' shore within three 
minutes' race. None of these things very glorious ; the 
best, however, that England, it seems, was then able to 
provide for a boy of gift ; who, such as they are, loves 
them — never, indeed, forgets them. The short waists 
modify to the last his visions of Greek ideal. His fore- 



242 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

grounds had always a succulent cluster or two of green- 
grocery at the corners. Enchanted oranges gleam in Covent 
Gardens of the Hesperides, and great ships go to pieces 
to scatter chests of them on the waves. That mist of early 
sunbeams in the London dawn crosses many and many a 
time the clearness of Italian air ; and by Thames' shore, 
with its stranded barges and glidings of red sail, dearer 
to us than Lucerne lake or Venetian lagoon — by Thames' 
shore we will die. . . . He attaches himself with the faith- 
fullest childlove to everything that bears the image of the 
place he was born in. No matter how ugly it is, — has it 
anything about it like Maiden Lane, or like Thames' 
shore ? If so, it shall be painted for their sake. Hence to 
the very close of life Turner could endure ugliness which 
no one else of the same sensibility would have borne with 
for an instant. Dead brick walls, blank square windows, 
old clothes, market-womanly types of humanity — any- 
thing fishy and muddy, like Billingsgate or Hungerford 
Market, had great attraction for him ; black barges, 
patched sails, and every possible condition of fog. . . . 
No Venetian ever draws anything foul ; but Turner de- 
voted picture after picture to the illustration of effects of 
dinginess, smoke, soot, dust, and dusty texture ; old sides 
of boats, weedy roadside vegetation, dunghills, straw- 
yards, and all the soilings and stains of every common la- 
bour. And, more than this, he could not only endure, but 
enjoyed and looked for litter^ like Covent Garden wreck 
after the market. . . . Even his richest vegetation in 
ideal work is confused. . . . The last words he ever spoke 
to me about a picture were in gentle exultation about his 
St. Gothard, " that litter of stones which I endeavoured to 
represent." The second great result of this Covent Garden 
training was understanding of, and regard for, the poor, 
whom the Venetians, we saw, despised ; whom, contrarily, 
Turner loved, and more than loved — understood. . . . 
Reynolds and Gainsborough, bred in country villages, 
learned there the country boys' reverential theory of " the 
Squire," and kept it. They painted the Squire and the 
Squire's Lady as centres of the movements of the uni- 
verse, to the end of their lives. But Turner perceived the 



THE REJECTED STONE 243 

younger Squire in other aspects about his lane, occurring 
prominently in its night scenery as a dark figure, or one 
of two, against the moonlight. . . . "That mysterious 
forest below London Bridge" — better for the boy than 
wood of pine or grove of myrtle. How he must have tor- 
mented the watermen, beseeching them to let him crouch 
anywhere in the bows, quiet as a log, so only that he might 
get floated down there among the ships, . . . which ships 
also are inhabited by glorious creatures — red-faced sail- 
ors, with pipes, appearing over the gunwales, true knights 
over their castle parapets. . . . Among the wheelbarrows, 
and over the vegetables, no perceptible dominance of re- 
ligion ; in the narrow disquieted streets, none ; in the 
tongues, deeds, daily ways of Maiden Lane, little. Some 
honesty, indeed, and English industry, and kindness of 
heart, and general idea of justice ; but faith of any national 
kind, shut up from one Sunday to the next, not artistically 
beautiful even in those Sabbatical exhibitions, its para- 
phernalia being chiefly of high pews, heavy elocution, and 
cold grimness of behaviour. . . . This religion seems to 
him discreditable — discredited — not believing in itself ; 
putting forth its authority in a cowardly way ; watching 
bow far it might be tolerated ; continually shrinking, dis- 
claiming, fencing, finessing : . . . not to be either obeyed 
or combated by an ignorant yet clear-sighted youth ; only 
to be scorned. 

Thus was trained the first artist whose eye was atwin 
with the country, through which it ran to and fro like 
the eye of the Lord, — a veritable Peer, by divine right j 
of England. Art thou he that should come? Behold, the 
poor have the Gospel preached to them. The apotheosis 
of cabbage-leaves, sailors, fish- women is at hand ; these 
shall decorate sea and land, and shine in the firmament. 

Turner was himself blinded by excess of light, no 
doubt; and the eyes, long trained to copying dark old 
pictures by altar-lights, gazed upon this dawn of English 
art only at cost of seeing a spot on the heart of its sun, 



244 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

or of sore eyes. But ancient art sank fossilized to its 
stratum when Turner began to paint England, — its La- 
bour, its Sorrow, and Death. The Pre-Raphaelist Brothers 
are the first to see that the old flowers have withered, 
must be henceforth honeyless forever; and they will 
wander back to the old clime and age whence the seeds 
of them were wafted. Let the shadow go back on the dial 
beyond the age of Raphael! Let us repair to the light- 
fountains of the morning world, when as yet there was 
some childlike faith and enthusiasm among men ! Thither 
went the earnest pilgrims only to find a desert, but a des- 
ert from which they could see, as never when near to it, 
the seed of all the faded arts of Greece and Italy thickly 
strewn in Covent Garden and Maiden Lane, — their first 
grass blade prophecies appearing in the glories which 
Turner had thrown on the walls of English homes. 

Happy for the wild prophet, for the eye-dazzled school 
he founded, and for us — the people — that the Inter- 
preter arose whose words we have already read ; who, al- 
ways eloquently, albeit sometimes fitfully, has managed 
to utter to this English race the great admonition, that 
no Art can ever spring up here unless it spring from the 
hearts and homes of the people; that never until the 
homes of the poor are happy can the mansions of the rich 
be beautiful; and — this above all — that any true Art 
must be the fair expression of the faith that is, not of 
creeds that have had their day and their flower in Greece 
and Italy. 

Heine stood with his friend Alphonso before the cathe- 
dral at Rheims. "Why," said Alphonso, "cannot such 
structures be built now ? " — " That," replied the poet, " was 
built by an age of convictions; ours is an age of opinions." 

How little does the copyist in the Venetian, or Floren- 



THE REJECTED STONE 245 

tine, or English Gallery understand the practical need 
which created the work he imitates! He would repeat, 
for applause of dilettanti, a picture which was wrought to 
save the unlettered poor from hell, and allure them heaven- 
ward ; he would make a prettiness of saints and demons 
who on the old canvas waged a war with eternal issues 
for the soul of the peasant, who thus only could realize 
the mighty drama of heaven and earth. The domes are 
copied when the shrines for which they were built have 
perished ; and the spire in which the roof of the cottage 
was transfigured, pointing the peasantry from afar to 
their common religious dwelling, remains only to show 
the poor the particular spot with which they have nothing 
at all to do. For some time yet these things may call 
themselves Art. The graceful serpent having glided away 
elsewhere, we must stuff this its cast skin as well as we 
can, and persuade ourselves that its faded spots are the 
stars of heaven. Meanwhile the living line of grace and 
beauty in its seeming death is already putting forth for 
eyes subtle as its own the jewels that shall adorn its new 
sheath. 

What convictions have we corresponding to those which 
sculptured the Phidian Jove or the Milonian Venus, or 
painted the great Italian pictures, or built St. Peter's 
dome? None. Then for the present no real Art. The one 
thing we really believe in is Scepticism : this is the in- 
spiration of our Science, of our clamour for more educa- 
tion, of our democracy ; they are all the utterances of the 
clear and vigorous Misgiving which distinguishes this age. 
But in these directions alone can we find the tendencies 
which, shadows as they are, point toward the faint gray 
that must flush to the dawn of Art. Our very Scepticism 
having sent us into Town-halls and Corn-exchanges in 



246 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

England, and into Free Schools, Universities, and State- 
houses in Germany and America, these begin to gather a 
certain elegance about them. The American Schoolhouse 
rises in the smallest village like a castle. The Birmingham 
Town-hall has more poetry about it than any of the 
Churches around it. The Hoe cylinder press has a touch 
of transcendentalism in its gentle power. The gas-fixtures 
are putting forth pendent lilies. There are graceful forms 
visible at the cattle-shows. A tint of beauty shines upon 
all these green shoots, that mark each where some sinew 
of necessity has given its stroke of work in good faith. 

Poor things are these. Be it admitted. But whence 
came those splendours of ancient art we copy and recopy? 
Those illuminated letters of old manuscripts were but the 
shapes of hut or tree or animal footprint with which the 
savage marked for his fellow the fact he would convey. 
The blending tree-branches, the trefoil flower, swell to 
the Gothic pile; and the sunrise is photographed on the 
flamboyant wall. The cornice was the rude Northman's 
shield against the snow; the fringe on the tower was 
made for crossbows. The simple devices of necessity in 
one age become the ideals of another. The serious occu- 
pations of their ancestors become the sports of the luxu- 
rious. The primitive trademarks become heraldic arms. 
There is not a beauty shed upon us by the fading Arts of 
the past which was not born of some effort of man to 
adjust his life to the emergency before him, just as the 
Covent Garden greengrocer worked a hundred years ago, 
as now, all unconscious that one sane mind at least would 
find his incidental "litter" fit to grace the summit of St. 
Gothard. 

Yet I would not say the Arts of the past have accom- 
plished their work. Locked up, here at least, from the 



THE REJECTED STONE 247 

people, — especially on the one day when they might see 
them, — they have not yet done the only work they can do : 
they have not stimulated the horny lens in the labourer's 
brow into an eye. There is beauty enough all around us, 
had we eyes to see it. " Mr. Turner," said a sagacious lady, 
" I never saw anything in Nature like your picture there." 
" Don't you wish you could ? " answered the artist. The 
artist is he who sees a thing; the rest of us see but a 
little surface of any object. When the people have eyes, 
ApoUos and Madonnas will walk the streets before them. 
Can any art equal, O mother, the shining hair and blue 
eyes of thy child ? One day, an eye like that which looks 
from the parent to the babe will be taught to scan the vast 
cartoons of Eternal Beauty covering earth and sky, and 
not only the one darling lineament of it revealed by love. 
Who built the grandeurs of Baalbec? the conviction 
that induced three hundred of the Carthaginian youth to 
lie victims upon its altar for the good of their city. Baal, 
Jupiter, Jahv^, — the Sun in his manifold apotheoses, — 
they have had their kingdoms, their sacrifices ; but Hu- 
manity has its temples and altars yet to come. Already 
the flower of the American youth has shown itself ready 
to die for the most despised of races ; and over their graves 
shall ascend the conviction that to create man himself, to 
rescue him from degradation and unfold his powers, is the 
high task of the coming Art. In its light, the finer souls 
shall look upon the meanest abode where a human Spirit 
dwells with a reverence equal to that which ancient Syri- 
ans felt for the temple of the Sun ; and what was once 
done for saints and gods shall be done for men and women. 
So wrought the original Creators of Art. A beggar sat 
for one of the apostles in the Vatican, a barefooted flower- 
girl for one of its angels. But I dream of a yet higher Art, 



248 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

which shall make the beggar an apostle of God — not in 
paint, but in reality ; which shall transform the flower-girl 
to an angel in deed and in truth ; under whose touch dead 
hearts and string brains shall come forth, like rock from 
the quarry, to rise in the walls and domes of a humanized 
world. Of the creations of that future Art the greatest 
sculptures and pictures of the past are but sketches 
and studies ; its destiny shall be to realize those patterns 
*' seen on the Mount " in purified towns, happy homes, 
clean and sweet tenements, universal education, beautiful 
health, and, above all, in securing to every human being 
the freedom to carve his or her own being into the charac- 
ter for which each life exists, — the statue worthy to be 
unveiled in the presence of God and man. 

THE PILGRIM'S LAST REFLECTIONS 

After all, one of those gentlemen so recently employed 
by the upper classes to laugh down the rights of man in 
Parliament might not be without something to say for 
himself. " You have the majority, it is true," he might 
say ; " so had Herod and Pilate when they joined hands. 
But I know that one with Truth is a more real majority. 
The rights of man ? Read the statistics of false measures, 
the statistics of gin and beer ; walk through St. Giles's 
with your pockets shut tight and your eyes wide open ; 
visit the police court ; watch the crowd gathered about 
the prize-ring ; and tell me what you think of their sacred- 
ness. How would you like such people to make laws for 
you ? Linger a little under the arches at St. Pancras, and 
listen to the religious ranters ; then put it to the vote of 
the assembly what shall be your creed." 

Lately I read the legend of a youth caught up in the 



THE PILGRIM'S LAST REFLECTIONS 249 

air by an angel, with whom he floated over the world, 
that he might see the whole of it. The angel went too 
near the stars for him. " Let us go lower," said the youth ; 
" I love the earth." The angel went lower — near enough 
for him to seethe out lines of continents. " Lower yet ! " 
said the youth ; " I love the smell of the earth, its scented 
trees and grass ; and the bright ships, the fishermen, are 
dearer to me than hemispheres and continents." So the 
angel went lower still. But now they saw sad scenes : a 
poor slave and his wife pursued by bloodhounds; they 
saw them plunge in the river, hand in hand, to find free- 
dom in death. They saw an army besieging a city ; shot 
and shell bore death among women kneeling with babes 
in their arms. The city falls ; the survivors are given over 
to the cruelty and lust of the victorious soldiery. They 
saw the dens of cities where the human image is seared 
out of men and women by vice. And now the young man's 
wings began to droop. " Higher, higher ! " he cried to 
the angel. "I have seen enough — too much; let us soar 
higher! " — "Nay, not so," replied the angel; " thou hast 
seen, not too much, but too little; we must go lower." 
Then, lowering their wings, they skimmed the earth like 
swallows, and they saw men and women coming from far 
and near to break every fetter of the slaves whose cry 
they had heard, they saw hovering near the pillaged city 
a host with white banners binding up the wounded, warring 
upon war ; and amid the dens of vice they saw busy work- 
ers building schools, asylums, hospitals ; nay, even amid 
the wretched and vile they found many heroically van- 
quishing the dangers and temptations of their hard lot, and 
coming closer still, saw tints of kindliness and feeling in 
tainted hearts, — in all, the hope and prophecy of a fairer 
destiny. 



250 THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE 

May it not be that our philosophers and politicians also 
too generally come but close enough to see the outlines of 
nations, or the aggregates of populations ? 

And now to you, O freethinkers, liberals, emancipated 
souls, the Pilgrim utters this his final word. 

We have deeply learned that God is our Father! we 
need to feel as deeply that every man is our brother. 
Who of you, if his own son or brother were the victim of 
some delusion that darkened life, would spare effort to 
relieve him of it ? Yet all around us are the children of 
our common Father tossed from the delusion that God is 
a Tyrant to the delusion that there is no God at all. As 
we look into the past, we see what men have done for the 
love of Christ, — what they have surrendered and endured 
in their misdirected zeal and passion for him whom they 
adored as a Saviour. As much as they loved the dead, let 
us love the living Christ — Humanity. Surely Truth and 
Spiritual Liberty should not have less power to animate 
and inspire, or to command sacrifices, than Superstition ! 

There is a story of the Holy Grail which the Laureate 
has passed by, but which we may remember. In the days 
when men wandered through the world seeking that cup, 
made of a single precious stone, holding the real blood of 
Christ, a Knight left England to search for the same in 
distant lands. As he passed from his door, a poor sufferer 
cried to him for help. Absorbed in his grand hope, the 
Knight heeded him not, but went on. He wandered to 
the Holy Land, fought in many wars, endured much, but 
found not the precious cup ; and at last, disappointed and 
dejected, he returned home. As he neared his own house, 
the same poor sufferer cried to him for help. " What dost 
thou require?" asked the Knight. The aged man said, 



THE PILGRIM'S LAST REFLECTIONS 251 

" Lo I, am perishing with thirst." The Knight dismounted 
and hastened to fetch a cup of water. He held the half -clad 
sufferer in his arms, raised his head, and proffered the 
water to his parched lips. Even as he did so the cup 
sparkled into a gem, and the knight saw in his hand the 
Holy Grail, flushed with the true blood of Christ. And 
you, my brothers, may wander far, and traverse many 
realms of philosophy and theology, to find the truth which 
represents the true life-blood of the noblest soul ; but you 
shall find it only when and where you love and serve as 
he did. If you can but give to the fainting soul at your 
door a cup of water from the wells of truth, it shall flash 
back on you the radiance of God. As you can save, so 
shall you be saved. And be you sure that when you are 
really moved by the outcries of famished hearts and 
brains, as by the wailings of helpless babes, — when you 
deeply long to bear light and hope to men, — the ways of 
doing so will open before you, even as undreamed ener- 
gies to fill them full shall be born within you. 



THE GOSPEL OF ART 



THE GOSPEL OF ART 

THE lavish way in which wealth was shown devoting 
itself to useless objects, in the Hamilton Sale, enabled 
us to realize epochs of luxury which sometimes seem fabu- 
lous. Three small tables brought together <£17,500. One 
can imagine the feelings with which poor people, who can 
hardly earn bread for their families, would read such a 
fact as that. What would be their emotions? Would they 
reflect on the happy transformation of their rags and 
wretchedness a small portion of that money might cause? 
Would they feel angry that so much should go for a little 
ornamental wood and metal while human beings, said to 
be made in the image of God, go so cheap? I suspect, on 
the contrary, that the poorest would experience a certain 
pleasure and elation in the thought of such magnificence. 
To enjoy such luxury and splendour is the latter-day 
heaven. A haggard hermit in his cell, with his brain full 
of visions of celestial bliss, does not feel envy or wrath at 
the glory of divine beings. He would be loath to have 
them lose it. It is a joy to believe it all there, and he 
even makes his own condition more miserable to enhance 
that heavenly luxury. True, the hermit hopes some day 
to share that bliss, but even on earth, by his faith, he 
does share it. The poor man now has lost that ancient 
vision : heaven has either faded away, or been spiritual- 
ized into an eternal sabbath passed in church. The poor 
do not enjoy going to church on earth, and the modern 

1 This and the three following* sermons, ** The Martyrdom of Man," 
"Consolers," and " The Madonna of Montbazon," were delivered at South 
Place Chapel in 1883, and published, first separately, and later bound 
with others, by E. W. Allen in London and John Haywood in Manchester. 



256 THE GOSPEL OF ART 

pictures of heaven have little attractiveness. But the su- 
preme splendours of earth have a great deal of attractive- 
ness; and although the poor are in want and ugliness, 
there is a certain satisfaction in the signs of the actuality 
of this sensuous ideal. It is something to witness splen- 
dour even where it is not shared. It is like a beautiful 
dream. The poor lad enjoys his peep into a palace almost 
as much as the prince who has got tired of it. The poor 
who witness the magnificence of the rich have a great 
compensation in seeing it from the point of poverty. 
What is the finest dish to a man who is surfeited? The 
imagination can only bring out lineaments of beauty on a 
dark background. Poverty supplies the dark background 
against which wealth shines with a beauty unknown to 
itself. A philosopher exclaimed, "Ah, if the rich were 
only rich as the poor fancy riches!" But it is impos- 
sible. Satiety smothers imagination. Familiarity breeds 
contempt. The rich are tantalized; and when some new 
toy comes along, — if only a pretty table made by some 
toiler in his shop, — they throw away their gold like chaff 
in the hope of securing a sensation of real beauty. But 
no man was ever transfigured till he had first sweat blood. 
Meanwhile this grandee himself is the sensation for the 
poor. He walks in their eyes with fairies around him. If 
the man who paid <£6,000 for Marie Antoinette's writing- 
table had been recognized in Whitechapel the day after, 
he would probably have received more homage than any 
saint in the calendar. The perspective of poverty turns 
him into a picture. He is a figure of the good time coming, 
pedestalled on a table inlaid with six thousand pounds. 
The pounds appear exquisite gems to hungry eyes ; to his 
eyes they are dross, gladly exchanged for a small writing- 
table with some romance about it. 



THE GOSPEL OF ART 257 

For I am far from casting ridicule on that man. In the 
present condition of Art very few pictures are equal to 
the high effect of a table at which Marie Antoinette sat, 
and around which hover visions from the revolutionary- 
apocalypse. The rich man turning his gold into beauty ; 
and the poor taking off his hat to him, alike testify and , 
confess that, after all, happiness is not to be found in I 
mere wealth any more than in poverty, but in visions and 
emotions of beauty. Men are fooled all their days by mis- 
taking what is real, what illusive. A man spends his life 
heaping up money. To what end? It seems real to him; 
but when he has followed that notion into age he sees 
that he has passed by realities to accumulate their coun- 
ters. The realities are opportunities for thought, conver- 
sation, hours of repose, realization of the joy in every-day 
emotions of affection and of beauty. The money is worth- 
less except to make a machinery to secure these ulterior 
ends, and the ends have been forgotten in the machinery. 
The apparatus, therefore, is at last seen to be the illusion, 
however real it appeared, and the inward delight which 
seemed visionary is found to be the only real thing. 

The ministry of Art is the highest because, when true, 
it awakens in man the emotions which lift him to the 
highest possibilities of his existence. I have remarked the 
admission of Schopenhauer, the prophet of Pessimism. 
In the general misery of the world and of existence he 
finds one exception, the emotion excited by a work of art. 
Human life, with its round of cares, is like the wheel in 
Hades on which Ixion was bound : but when man gazes 
on a work of pure art, when he listens to sweet music, the 
wheel of Ixion pauses. Schopenhauer maintains that this 
fact cannot alter the general conditions of misery. Very 
few have either the culture or the opportunity for dwelling 



258 THE GOSPEL OF ART 

amid works of art. That may be true for the present, but 
it does not prevent our hope and endeavour for a coming 
time when Art shall be brought near to the life of all men, 
in its highest forms. For the rest, I am inclined to think 
there is much truth in the pessimist view of nature and 
human life apart from Art. Even by the arts of commod- 
ity mankind are brought into relation with a higher world. 
Take away the carpet, then take away the floor, and try 
to live on the ground : you will have got to nature un- 
adorned, and all the moral and mental weeds, and their 
worms, will reduce you to savagery. All civilization is the 
result of a new creation. But when the man has got into 
this new creation he is only in its lower story. His floor 
and walls cannot shut out the pains and meannesses of 
life. Nay, he must so bind himself to conditions of hard 
service, for needs of his animal nature, that his house is 
too often the prison of his higher faculties. To build and 
support that house he must do what the elements demand, 
what climate and trade prescribe, not what the heart in 
him would prompt. A few poetic intervals in the prose of 
compulsory business is the most he can hope for. Thus 
he is mainly in the grip of nature still, and is withheld 
from an ideal life. 

Now, it is the mission of Art to redeem man from much 
of this servitude by surrounding him with a new creation 
formed of the ideal elements within him. The whole ob- 
ject of existence is happiness. Whether a man seeks his 
happiness by martyrdom, or by sensuality, it is that he 
pursues. If a man seek momentary happiness at cost of 
more permanent happiness, he but illustrates Zoroaster's 
saying, " Wicked spirits are of dull reason." Seeking joy, 
a moth is consumed in candle ; seeking joy, a saint is con- 
sumed in his cell ; seeking joy, a drunkard is consumed in 



THE GOSPEL OF ART 259 

alcohol, and a sensualist in lust. His brief ecstasy cannot 
be denied to either, any more than the terrible price paid 
for it. In each there is a noble longing, — a longing for 
fuller existence, for freedom ; some prisoned power trying 
to burst into beauty. If each of these moths could only 
get the same ecstasy in a painted flame, — find the bliss 
without the ashes, — the mad desire would rise smokeless 
and pure. But because that cannot be done in ordinary 
life we praise that man as wiser who fulfils the harder 
prosaic conditions, and sacrifices part of his happiness to 
secure the rest and the best. 

All this is in the natural world. But there is a super- 
natural world. There is a light that never was on land or 
sea. There is a melody born of melody by which man 
is lifted out of these laborious or perilous conditions. 
Glimpses of this higher world are vouchsafed to all. 
There are few lives in which there have not occurred here 
and there the moment when some strain of music, some 
beautiful scene, a grand picture, or a thrilling oration, a 
poem, an emotion of love, or communion with a kindred 
intellect, has not awakened a serene joy, a lofty happiness, 
which all he has toiled for could not purchase. There is 
an electric touch in Wagner's " Meistersinger." To the 
shop of Hans Sachs, poet and cobbler, Eva the heroine 
comes in her distress, — seeking help in her troubled af- 
fairs. Trying to escape from impending wedlock without 
love, her true lover present also in the shop, she listens 
to Hans Sachs, the great-hearted singer, whose words seem 
trivial but deeply reveal that he knows her danger and 
will save her. Then suddenly the maiden darts forward 
and clasps the shoemaker to her heart, — not her lover, 
but the poet, — and cries, " O Sachs, my friend. Thou 
dearest man ! But for thee had I been wrapped in childish 



260 THE GOSPEL OF ART 

blindness. Through thee I control life's treasure. Through 
thee I recognize my soul. Through thee my heart finds 
its bloom. Were I free thou shouldst be my husband." 
The lover looking on might well be inspired by that out- 
burst of pure intellectual homage to sing his nobler strain 
which wins the maiden's hand. It is a fine expression of 
the magic of pure art, whereby it not only stills danger, 
but calms the tumult of passion, — pains of the past, anxi- 
eties of the future, lost and forgotten in a present joy 
that holds no sting. 

If a heart is happy, what matters it how cheap the 
cause? Why, said the old prophet, why do you spend 
your toil for that which satisfieth not ? It is difficult to 
be satisfied with pleasures which involve disproportionate 
pains. A little child, which enjoys a glittering toy as 
much as if it were gold and rubies, is ahead of the slave 
of conventions who weighs his pleasures in fashionable 
scales. The child's eyes, turning spots of paint to lustres 
of opal and diamond, seem slightly lunatic ; but of such is 
the kingdom of heaven. As science ascends it goes over 
on the child's side ; concerns itself profoundly with dust, 
and insects, and wanders about the fields picking grasses 
and shells and chipping stones. For all these small and 
cheap things are symbolical to science, raising it to a 
radiant realm of intellectual laws. 

Science and Art are justly wedded in one department 
of government. Art also deals with the symbolism of 
things, but sees them in their relation to the interior uni- 
verse of human thought and feeling, rather than, like 
science, to the external universe of laws. Art, therefore, 
when great, leads on and expresses the spiritual evolution 
of humanity. I speak, therefore, of the Gospel of Art. 
yEvery Gospel, every religious movement that brings glad 



THE GOSPEL OF ART 261 

tidings, a nobler promise and hope to humanity, first 
takes shape in Art. The remains of ancient Greek Art, 
which now make a frame round the symbols of Christian- 
ity, are chapters of an ancient gospel which held up before 
man an ideal of his own perfection./ As we walk through 
the classic galleries, and look silently on those grand 
sculptures of a buried world, the Apollo, the Herakles, 
the Jupiter tell us of the majesty of man at his best. 
Herakles, wearing the skin of the monster he has slain, 
shows us man civilizing the earth, grappling evil in every 
form, clearing land and sea of brutality. The Apollo Bel- 
vedere shows us a diviner force arising in man. He has 
exchanged the club for an arrow, animal force for skill. 
He need not be so large in size, for his senses have gained 
nicety. Apollo has just sped his arrow at the Python : 
without rage or fear he looks calmly or even beamingly 
upon the evil form he has destroyed, showing in his own 
beauty the form which has a right to succeed the ended 
Python power. Aphrodite combines the ideals of physical 
beauty. She rides on a lion, because beauty must rest on 
health ; adequacy and strength in humanity must master 
the lower brute force. There is the pathetic group of 
Laokoon and his sons bound and crushed in the coils of 
the serpent, symbolizing in their agony man held and de- 
stroyed by the evil he cannot conquer, — whether a fero- 
city of external nature, or an unmastered evil habit. And 
there is the nymph doomed to be eternally trying to carry 
water in a sieve: she gazes upon the water disappearing 
through the sieve with such wonder and despair as many 
a Greek heart must have felt at seeing its fellow beings 
trying to secure the waters of spiritual life and purity in 
the sieve of religious fable and formalism. 

Such, indeed, was the end of this Greek gospel writ in 



262 THE GOSPEL OF ART 

stone and in paint. Its power to curb and control man 
having ceased, it passed over to the Roman conquerors 
of the world to decorate the very luxury and brutality it 
was meant to restrain. On the destruction of Corinth, the 
Roman general gathered up the great works of Greece 
to grace the spectacle on his return. In Rome the finest 
sculptures were set out in imperial gardens. The figures 
of divine beings were regarded in some cases as statues 
of thaumaturgists. Alexander Severus had statues made 
of Abraham and Jesus Christ to be placed in his collec- 
tion opposite Orpheus and Apollonius of Tyana, all as 
conjurors or miracle workers. So ended the gospel of 
Greece. 

But meanwhile in old quarries beneath Rome, where 
the bodies of slaves were thrown, a poor population, who 
had become believers in Christ, had found refuge from 
persecution. There, in catacombs, they dreamed of their 
Messiah as about to return, as casting down the throne 
of their cruel oppressors, and filling the world with his 
kingdom of love and peace. And there, while the splen- 
did relics of Greek art were decorating imperial revelries 
and atrocities in the splended city above, these poor be- 
lievers scrawled upon those subterranean walls the sym- 
bols of a new Gospel. There they drew pictures of the 
dove, the anchor, the olive branch ; there the lamb is seen 
on the top of a mountain, crowned with halo of light, 
while from beneath burst forth streams of water; and 
there is the picture of the Good Shepherd carrying on his 
shoulder a goat, — the goat he was presently said to part 
on his left hand for eternal burnings. These symbols are 
scrawled rudely enough down there, but they were the 
germs of a new Gospel, and they flowered into those great 
pictures of Christian art which are now the admiration of 



THE GOSPEL OF ART 263 

the world. It was these pictures, of the old Italian mas- 
ters, that really shaped for the people their Gospel of 
Christ. Theologians may derive it from written scriptures, 
and may make it as dismal tidings as they please. But 
that which first won and has retained the faith and affec- 
tion of the people was never a theology, never a dogma, 
but a Gospel painted on human hearts and on walls around 
them, long before copied thence by Giotto and Raphael, 
by Angelo and Leonardo, — a gospel of gentleness and 
purity, of inward virtues and graces expressed in the 
forms of Jesus and his mother and friends, just as physi- 
cal and intellectual perfections had been expressed in the 
fair statues of Greece. It was one Gospel following an- 
other. It was man climbing from his physical and intel- 
lectual to his spiritual glory. And yet, although the waxing 
power and wealth of Christendom gave greater complete- 
ness to the expression, the beauty of the new Gospel was 
never more fully felt by those who gazed upon the splendid 
Italian works, than by those who amid darkness and 
wretchedness scrawled the symbols of their faith upon the 
walls of the catacombs. Had the emperors and patricians 
known what beautiful visions surrounded the subterranean 
outcasts, they would gladly have exchanged their palaces 
for those gloomy cells. Those persecuted ones in their 
dreams were dwelling amid the gold and jasper of paradise. 
Such is the power of the Gospel of Art. 

Unless Art exerts this power it is not high Art. And, 
judged by this standard, there is little to be seen in our 
time which can be called Art, except by courtesy. In 
going through our galleries of contemporary Art we find 
plenty of skill, finish, evidences of hard work, but soon 
discover that the pictures have nothing to say to us. We 
look till we get tired, and sit down, and then look again, 



264 THE GOSPEL OF ART 

and when we leave, — generally with a sense of relief, — 
we are just the same as we went in. No transformation 
has been wrought in us. But a great work never wearies ; 
a great work never leaves us unchanged. Where sunshine 
falls, some violet or daisy ought to answer. 

I am impressed by the feeling that the Art of to-day 
has little to say, but is saying it with marvellous skill. 
Suppose Tennyson or Browning should write smooth 
verses in a perfect manuscript, and publish them in fac- 
simile. These verses say, "The rose is red, the violet 
blue ; the orange is yellow, the rainbow is pretty," and so 
on. And then, if the public should say that is not poetry, 
there is no new creation in that, how were it if the poet 
should answer. Ah, but just look at the beauty of that 
handwriting ! See the neat curve of that O, and the wave 
of that R, and the smoothness of the whole thing ! All 
very well ; but when we look for poetry and find penman- 
ship, we cannot help feeling disappointment. And even 
if the poet goes higher, and asks us to admire the beauty 
of his language, his rhythm and rhyme, we still must feel 
that poetic art is something else. We cannot carry on 
the business of the world in that way. In this the king- 
dom of Art lags behind the kingdom of use. The judge 
will not accept a lawyer's rhetoric for fact and argument. 
Some one told me of a barrister addressing the court in 
pompous rhetoric, when a judge interrupted him with the 
question, "Is this a jury case?" — "No, my lord," said the 
barrister. — " Oh," said the judge, "I thought you must be 
speaking to a jury. Surely you cannot hope to influence 
the court by such fine talk as that." 

In our galleries of annual Art we move through hall 
after hall of fine talk, highly coloured rhetoric, but there 
is no great truth it has at heart, no burden of hope or 



THE GOSPEL OF ART ms 

prophecy, almost nothing that thrills us, fills us with 
happiness. What picture have you seen that spoke to your 
heart, summoned tears to your eyes; what picture was 
there from which you could hardly tear yourself away, 
and which you still carry with you in an ineffaceable 
impression ? In the presence of the Apollo Belvedere no 
tongue can speak. I defy any one to look upon Raphael's 
Transfiguration without tears of triumphant joy. I do not 
wish to be hypercritical about the Art of to-day ; it has 
some graces and perfections of expression which the old 
masters had not ; but, as I expect an orator to carry some 
point, as I expect a physician to cure his patient, and the 
warrior to conquer, and judge everybody by the earnest- 
ness with which he does something ; as I cannot applaud 
the rhetoric that does not convince, the splendid armour 
that does not prevail, nor any beauty without charm ; so 
I cannot pay homage to the fine art of our time as a whole. 
The exceptions are those works — too rare, yet the more 
precious — which show a tendency to interpret the life of 
our own time, by showing it in universal relations. Lately 
I went through the house where such an artist long sat 
at his beautiful task. The books and furniture of the dead 
poet and artist were set out and labelled for sale. What 
debris ! Old Roman lamps, and dingy angels on old pan- 
els ; jugs and bowls and broken scoriae of splendour long 
dead ; stringless harps and lutes and mandolins. In Ros- 
setti's pictures they were transfigured, as may now be seen 
in the exhibitions. As science reveals our nature gliding in 
early forms, swimming, flying, so teaching us what we are ; 
as mythology discovers our mental nature similarly pass- 
ing through old dreams and fables, revealing the substance 
delivering us from the outgrown form ; so did the art of 
Rossetti create the past anew by gathering what was of 



266 THE GOSPEL OF ART 

eternal significance in its sentiment and aspiration. He 
once painted a knight and lady who walking in a wood 
met themselves ; and in most of his pictures of the earlier 
world thoughtful men and women meet themselves, though 
it may be some in Paradise or Hell long perished out of 
thought. 

There are other artists in whom such high aims live and 
abide among us ; there are even signs that the life which 
put forth the " Pre-Raphaelist " Germ will become a fruit- 
ful branch. But, on the other hand, it is to be feared there 
is even a reactionary tendency, as shown in an increas- 
ingly realistic treatment of nature. What is the use of a 
man trying to paint a portrait of nature? In the first 
place, he cannot. A mirror set up before a landscape will 
catch a more exact image than any artist ; and if, with 
chemicals, you render that image permanent, and colour 
it, you have a photograph. That is a portrait of the land- 
scape drawn by the sun, painted by imitative skill. But 
it is no work of Art. " Art is called Art because it is not 
nature," said Goethe. The artist is there to select and 
combine the forms of nature into new creations ; just as a 
writer combines his dictionary so as to make the words 
express thoughts. If in music a musician imitates natural 
sounds, — lowing of cows, voice of cuckoos, — the more he 
is cow or cuckoo the less is he musician. We do not need 
Art to acquaint us with the surface facts of nature, the 
details or the groups of nature, but to reveal the possibili- 
ties of nature. He is to show us the soul underneath these 
hard, unsympathetic surfaces of things. The gardener is 
doing that to some extent, and every man who turns some 
bit of chaos to an order corresponding to the need of man. 
The artist is to do that in a higher plane. He is to deliver 
us from this treadmill of day and night, this wheel of heat 



THE GOSPEL OF ART 267 

and cold, of life and death, by clapping wings to nature 
and human nature, turning every dry fact into a symbol 
of supernatural truth and beauty ; so that our few years 
of life shall represent an eternity of emotions and experi- 
ences. 

That kind of Art will come when it is called for. That 
may be a long time yet ; for our rulers have decided that 
Art, far from being a Gospel, is so profane that it must 
wear a veil on Sunday. That is just the way to make Art 
profane. The representative cannot come until there is a 
constituency for him. At present, the one point of contact 
between the masses and art is in the theatre. Unfortu- 
nately, it is not a Sunday institution, but by way of com- 
pensation it is not a preaching institution ; it is doing the 
work of every art, — it rounds the little life of toil and sor- 
row with a sleep of care, a dream of beauty, — refutes the 
dismal dogma with a revelation somewhat ideal pervading 
the coarseness and tragedy of every -day life. Every nightly 
play is like a fragrant water lily growing out of mud and 
floating on the turbid stream of the struggle for existence. 
In that stream he is drowned who is not held up every 
day by communion with beauty. And a man may be 
drowned in the struggle for wealth as in that for daily 
bread. Study this thing ! If you have no love of artistic 
beauty you should go and look at pictures every day, — 
such noble pictures as those in the National Gallery which 
represent the genius of an age inspiring some great man, 
like Bellini, Fra Angelico, Eubens, Turner. Look at them ; 
go again, until you like them ; then till you love them, 
which will be because you understand them. And that 
again will be because you see your nobler self in them, — 
your individual self merged in the poem of humanity. 

Carlyle had a sort of contempt for Art. He pursued 



268 THE GOSPEL OF ART 

inartistic reality for threescore of his years and found it 
a skeleton. Then when too aged and weak to pursue it 
longer, a fair lady, a pure artist, came to see him, sat with 
him, and one day brought her easel. She covered her palette 
with a chaos of colours ; then made her canvas a similar 
pretty chaos. Then the old man beheld his features grow- 
ing out of that chaos. He looked into his own eye. It was 
mystical. All those bright colours were required to make 
his time-worn face. He smiled as if once more a child. 
Again the artist came, — for months the old man was 
beguiled ; his path to the grave was fringed with these 
flowers, each of which revealed that happier self he had 
sought amid seeming realities which had proved illusions. 
But you will find your spiritual portrait in every work of 
Art. Once deeply conversant with ideal beauty, Nature 
will never be cold and hard around you again ; you will 
see in familiar faces a loveliness never seen before ; you 
will find out that you have been living in a poem all your 
life ; and then, instead of surrounding yourself with the 
costly cumbrous furniture prescribed by fashion, you will 
be able to select, if not the flowers of art, the remembrances 
of them, — books and poems, engravings, or even pho- 
tographs, — which will all be grand outlines of your soul. 
That is art which awakens the imagination. A cultivated 
imagination is the great colourist ; to a cultivated imagi- 
nation a photograph, not of nature but of a great work 
of art, conveys half its power, at least. But I would also 
have you remember that if Art is to be to you a Gospel it 
is to be received, as it were, on your knees. With such rev- 
erence every great picture was painted. There is a picture 
by Giotto at Assisi of St. Francis recalling from death a 
woman who has died without confession. He recalls her to 
life long enough to confess. The woman is seen raising 



THE GOSPEL OF ART mo 

herself on her bier, and to the Saint who kneels before 
her she pours out the secrets of her soul. So kneels great 
Art before dead nature. By its power it raises the silent 
world into conscious life, gives nature a voice. To the true 
artist, to the kneeling devotee of ideal beauty, nature 
whispers her secrets. Such secrets from the heart of na- 
ture are in every true work of art, — in every poem, drama, 
painting, or statue, — not to be gained from flowers, or 
landscapes, or from any object which has not been raised 
to life by the genius of man ; and if you can get at that 
secret you will have gained a new light on the secret of 
your heart and life. 



THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" 



"THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" 

THIS is the title of a powerful volume. In my own 
mind it is also associated with the man who wrote it, 
and his martyrdom. Poor Winwood Reade ! What a man 
was that! There rises before me the face of that pure 
scholar, with its melancholy smile, and the dark eye, some- 
times flashing as if sun-kindled, but habitually softened 
and shadowed by looking so long into the eyes of Death. 
If ever that mysterious flame men call genius haloed a 
brow, it was that of Winwood Reade ; if ever true and 
tender heart beat in a breast, it beat in his. His spirit was 
of ethereal fineness, his culture of the rarest, and the round 
world which he had travelled was spiritualized in his po- 
etic thought. Swiftly fell consumption upon him; while 
he wrote Death sat by his side. They who witnessed that 
decline, who knew what rich freight was day by day sink- 
ing down to the dark water's edge, presently to disappear, 
were wont to feel a bitterness of spirit. But the young 
scholar, whose genius flamed up more brilliantly as his 
form wasted away, used his intimacy with Death to learn 
a secret which only in the " dark valley " can be revealed. 
He learned how many men and women, and even nations, 
are spiritual prisoners of the Shadow of Death, even 
while living, through the belief that only beyond the grave 
are heaven or hell reached ; and from beside the grave 
opening to receive him he warned these lifelong victims 
that the only victory over death is to concentrate them- 
selves on life, to expect nothing, dread nothing beyond, 
to cherish the blooms of love and fulfil the happy task ere 
the night cometh. 



274 "THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" 

When at last the eagle was brought low, the last pen 
from its wing fallen, he found a home with kindred minds. 
He was taken by a gentleman and lady who used to gather 
with us here, the late Dr. Humphrey Sandwith and his 
wife, to their beautiful mansion at Wimbledon. There they 
watched over him tenderly to the end. One day when they 
happened to be walking in the garden while the invalid 
slept, a fanatical woman, — one of a number who had been 
trying to reach him, — managed to get to his room unper- 
ceived. Mrs. Sandwith, returning, heard the evangelical 
scream, found poor Reade in silent distress, with this wild 
person praying beside him. The invader was ejected ; and 
that apparition of Woman haunted to insanity by super- 
stitious terrors was the last martyrdom of Win wood Reade. 
Surrounded by tenderest sympathy, he faded out of ex- 
istence in his thirty-seventh year. They, also, who so 
watched over him have since passed away in premature 
death. Wealth, culture, genius, there in their fit abode, 
made the most and best of what time and opportunity 
were theirs ; but, alas, evil inheritances from nature with- 
ered up all the gifts that human love could bestow. What 
Winwood Reade wrote was universal history, and that he 
called "The Martyrdom of Man." His book might be 
called " A Short History of the Human Race." He sums 
up the evidence of races, the testimony of ages, and affirms 
that life is a martyrdom. " In each generation the human 
race has been tortured that their children might profit by 
their woes. Our own prosperity is founded on the agonies 
of the past." We are to suffer for the benefit of those 
who are to come. But instead of the famine, pestilence, 
and war which our ancestors suffered, we are to have a 
season of mental anguish in order that posterity may rise. 
" The soul must be sacrificed ; the hope in immortality 



"THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" 275 

must die. A sweet and charming illusion must be taken 
from the human race, and youth and beauty vanish never 
to return." 

Such are the closing words of the volume. Had its au- 
thor lived longer it might have closed with a more cheer- 
ful chapter, showing that illusions rarely vanish so long 
as they are sweet and charming, but only when they have 
become haggard and bitter. When Winwood Reade had 
written this very book some of his literary friends, and 
his publishers also, tried to persuade him to alter the re- 
ligious portions of it, warning him that it would provoke 
the anger of the public. But he would alter no word ; the 
book has had wide circulation, and provoked no anger, 
though every chapter holds more far-reaching " blasphemy," 
as the foolish word goes, than anything put forth by the 
freethinkers now in prison. Winwood Reade said: "It 
has done me good to write this book ; and, therefore, I do 
not think it can injure those by whom it will be read." 
There surely he was right. If it did him good to think 
and write so, why should it not equally do good to others ? 
He could not have found it good had it been the burial 
of sweet and charming illusions, the vanishing of youth 
and beauty. It is not to be denied that there must be in- 
stances when cherished beliefs are violently torn out of 
the mind, just as there are violent deaths. That is always 
deplorable. When people are all trained to think, which 
always means to think freely, their hereditary errors will 
die a natural death, will die because their continuance in 
the mind is a sort of dotage, and they can no longer afford 
comfort and happiness. The most cherished beliefs of the 
world were once in Frigga, Bertha, Venus ; many of those 
deemed witches in the Middle Ages were persons celebrat- 
ing the rites of their beloved goddesses in secret, even at 



276 "THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" 

risk of being burned alive. Then came the love and wor- 
ship of the Madonna, so long and passionately cherished. 
We now wonder that our ancestors could have found hap- 
piness in such superstitions. Jahve and Jesus will appear 
just as remote to our posterity, and they will wonder how 
anybody in 1883 could cling to such conceptions. But we 
who now live, and can closely observe the beliefs around 
us, may see that Jahv^ and Jesus are cherished names, 
not cherished conceptions ; or rather that these ancient 
deities are no longer loved, no longer supply consolation 
and hope, and have been silently superseded by new 
ideals in the heart though their names be still on the lips. 

In other words, mankind still generally hold on to their 
illusions so long as these supply happiness, and surrender 
them only when happiness is sacrificed to them. In all 
time, and in every land, the martyrdom of Man has been 
the sacrifice of his happiness to consecrated forms which 
imprison the ideals that originally instituted them. Men 
never required to be burnt at the stake, massacred, im- 
prisoned, for disbelieving doctrines sweet and charming 
to human nature. The laws of evolution could not fail to 
make all men adapt their intellects to things dear to their 
hearts as to their interests. It is only where the heart 
has joined the intellect in protest that ease and self-inter- 
est are overcome, and men prefer suffering to conformity. 
The inward happiness is then sacrificed to the old form ; 
and the pain of the broken chrysalis means the freedom 
of its bright-winged prisoner, going forth to feed on the 
rose the life once nourished on the leaf. 

Let us consider, for instance, the doctrine of a divine 
providence. It is blasphemy, according to the Common 
Law of England, to deny the providence of God. Why 
should the law punish that? Because while it might be 



"THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" 277 

useful to tlie fortunate to have their prosperity considered 
God's favour, the unfortunate did not like to attribute to 
a supreme being their misfortunes. But if the miserable 
denied that their miseries were providential, they might 
presently deny that the lot of the wealthy is providential. 
The next step might be to inquire whether that good for- 
tune was fairly got, or perhaps to demand a share of it. 
Still, and despite coercive laws, the notion of a providence 
has declined in the proportion that social sympathies and 
self-reliance have been developed. After its account of the 
explosion at Westminster, the London " Times " said that 
an explosive canister placed near its own office was provi- 
dentially upset. It seemed to imply that the " Times " had 
a special providence among its employes, a precaution neg- 
lected by the Local Government Board. The word " provi- 
dential " here only meant " lucky," but its use in this case 
curiously suggests the fundamental arrogance of the notion 
in which it is founded. Among people who think of others 
as much as themselves the word should be tabooed. Applied 
to one's own good fortune as compared with another's bad 
fortune, it is a fawning acknowledgment of favouritism. 
To believe that the advantages of this world are gifts 
from God cannot compensate the fortunate, if they are 
good-hearted, for the pain of believing that the sufferings 
of the world are deliberately inflicted. Where belief in a 
providence has been abandoned, it is because it was found 
not charming at all, but painful. 

There are some to whom the belief is not painful enough 
to overcome their fear that if it be lost other and pleas- 
anter beliefs may follow it. There is a beautiful city on 
the Ohio, well called the Queen of the West, which has 
just suffered by a terrible flood. While a large part of 
this city, Cincinnati, was under water, and the energies 



278 "THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" 

of its citizens were taxed to give food and shelter to the 
poor whose homes were flooded or swept away, a Sunday- 
came ; the preachers preached about the calamity, and a 
paper reporting twelve of their sermons has reached me. 
The burden of nearly all of them is that God had sent 
that calamity, — as a judgment for sin, according to some ; 
to remind men of their littleness, according to others ; to 
supply an opportunity for charities, said a few. So spake 
the pulpit its prescribed theories. But meanwhile the citi- 
zens went to work and proved that they did not believe 
that the sufferers were especially sinful, and shielded them 
from the " judgment," just as if it had come from a demon ; 
they made the flood show, not their littleness, but their 
greatness and strength. When a human providence sent 
them help from other regions, in the form of a large sum 
of money, they declined to use a penny of it, and sent it 
on to poorer towns and villages suffering by the same 
flood. 

There are many cultivated and wealthy people living on 
the higher parts of that city, and no doubt many a child 
there has been taught to thank God for its happiness. 
Looking from a secure height upon the submerged houses 
below, such a child might even think it a pretty sight, 
and thank its providential parents for allowing it to go 
somewhere for a good view. But when that little form of 
healthy selfishness has grown to its social self, its human 
relatedness, it will require more than any twelve Cincin- 
nati apostles to make it feel grateful to God for a pictur- 
esque providence that drowns and pauperizes people. Such 
a providence will suffer in contrast with the human res- 
cuer, the generous citizen, with the charitable heart of 
those very clergymen, saving men from forces of disorder 
which they feel bound to call divine. 



"THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" 279 

The whole world is growing up from such childhood to 
such maturity. It requires laws and sermons, threats and 
bribes, to make even a few assent to the dogma of a pro- 
vidence, for it has become an odious idea. Were it not for 
custom, it would imply in the social man a certain self- 
ishness to thank for his personal welfare a deity equally 
responsible for others' woes. Such dogmas do not die by 
logic of the mind, but by recoil of the heart. And they who 
cannot deliver themselves from such " bodies of death," but 
must drag them into their pulpits, colleges, court-rooms, 
are martyrs; they are consumed on the altars where they 
are bound, whether by need or sacrament. The sun does 
not look down on a sadder sight than a scholar of the 
nineteenth century, spellbound in his prison of air, forced 
to corrupt the pure morning with breath of ancient charnel- 
houses full of dogmatic dead bones. I doubt not many such 
envy the freedom of those prisoners for blasphemy, whose 
rude scorn and scoff is more really reverent than to flatter 
these mummies, and set them up for the adoration of civ- 
ilized men and women. Among the many charities of our 
time, should there not be a society for salvation of the 
clergy from shams ? Men bound by sacraments to ancient 
creeds should excite our compassion. If they believe the 
creeds they must needs be ever haunted with visions of 
the hopelessly damned ; if they do not believe them they 
are conscious casuists or bound-thinkers ; in either case 
they are " spirits in prison" whom the charity of our age 
should deliver. There is more reason for propagating the 
gospel of our own age among the clergy, because their 
martyrdom is the sign of martyrdom of man. We should 
remember them as being all to some extent bound with 
them. When a clergyman is able to enter his pulpit, dis- 
own the Christian name, and preach just what he can ap- 



280 "THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" 

prove to his own mind and heart, without imperilling his 
professional position or prospects, then this nation will be 
free, just, civilized ; but not till then. And do you realize 
how many reforms are waiting for such freedom and jus- 
tice ? Do you realize, for instance, that the frightful evil 
of overpopulation cannot be arrested because no man can 
instruct the common people on that subject without being 
sent to prison, as Mr. Truelove was? Do you realize 
that the punishment of men for caricaturing Jahv^'s ap- 
pearance to Moses means the power of Syrian phantoms 
to lock up, every Sunday, institutions which might refine 
and delight millions, who are this day victims on those 
blood-stained altars ? Do you realize that because slavery 
has found its last stronghold in religion, it is impossible 
to convert untold millions of wealth, frozen up in ecclesi- 
astical icebergs, into streams of benevolence which might 
make England an earthly paradise ? It is my conviction 
that there is not one wrong, not one evil, moral or physi- 
cal, in this great nation which may not be traced to the 
root of a guarded superstition. That means that every 
belief, defended by law, involves human sacrifices. Did 
not man suffer by it, it would need no protecting law. Un- 
less, therefore, the established religion can be converted 
from its Syrian paganism, its mediaeval barbarism, from the 
unspeakable anachronism of its creeds, it will surely ter- 
minate in a revolution which will leave of it not one stone 
upon another. There is an Englishman growing up in the 
public school, and another in the university, who will meet 
together before a generation ends ; and when one shall bap- 
tize the other, the temple will either be purged of its money- 
changers or its destruction will be swift and terrible. 

The Christian religion is based upon the idea of the 
martyrdom of God. In the person of his Son, God is said 



"THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" 281 

to have borne the sins of the world, for them to have 
suffered, died, and gone to hell. Considered as a myth this 
does not correspond with the phenomena to be explained 
in the same satisfactory way as more ancient myths, — 
such as Prometheus, Adam and Eve, or Cain. For a true 
fabulist could hardly say God died to save man while man 
is not saved. There is a myth which comes nearer to the 
facts. It relates that in the beginning the great God pro- 
mised certain powerful spirits in his creation that he would 
never attack them, — neither by night or day, neither in 
the earth or the air. After they had obtained the divine 
word, these powerful beings behaved so badly that God 
considered how he might destroy them without breaking 
his word. One day he caught them up into a kind of a 
mist which was not precisely earth or air, and in a light 
that was not exactly night or day : and then and there he 
slew them. However, after thinking over the matter, this 
deity came to the conclusion that, if he had not broken 
his word, he had so bruised it that he must atone for it. 
So he retired into some far cavern of the universe to do 
penance. In his absence the affairs of the earth went on 
so badly that men called vehemently for their god, not 
knowing what had become of him. At last a messenger 
was sent to inform them that their God was doing penance 
for having broken his word. They asked what sufferings 
the penance required, and were given a long list of the 
agonies, deaths, starvations, wounds, violences which the 
deity had to undergo. Mankind then asked how long this 
penance was to last, and were told it must be many mil- 
lions of years. Whereupon men gathered together, medi- 
tated on the nameless sufferings this god had to undergo, 
considered too that in all that time the world would be 
virtually without a god, and they then addressed a petition 



282 "THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" 

to the great God begging that mankind might be allowed 
to bear his sin and sufferings for him, so that he might 
be restored to his throne in the universe. To that the god 
consented, and henceforth all the evils and agonies of the 
world, all its plagues and wars and other horrors, were 
held to have been transferred from an offending God to 
innocent humanity. 

This idea of man vicariously suffering for God is earlier 
than that of God suffering for man, and the fact hinted 
is one traceable in all histories of man's devotion to the 
idols of his imagination called gods. Their sins are many, 
multitudinous as the cruelties of nature whose forces were 
personified in them. Let any one read his Bible, or any 
Sacred Books, and remark how many ferocious things man 
ascribes to his deities while accepting the whole blame for 
himself. If a deity drowns mankind in a deluge, it is be- 
cause men were so violent ; if he stings them with serpents, 
it is because they were stiff-necked ; if he slaughters them 
by thousands, it is because they did not worship him ac- 
curately. It is always man's fault. Poor man, so patient, 
so humble under gods of his own creation, dependent on 
his smitten arm for their every altar and sacrifice! And 
this man, who has covered the earth with superb temples 
for his gods, even where he could only house himself in a 
hut ; who has loaded their altars with his flocks and fruits, 
though his children might cry for hunger ; who has spared 
not the fruit of his body, nor his own body, if the altar de- 
mand it — what have the gods given him in return ? Did 
they aid man to take one step on the path of civilization ? 
Did they help him in one struggle with the hardness of 
nature ? They cursed the first giver of the fruit of know- 
ledge, branded the first tiller of the soil, and the worker 
in brass, and him who brought fire to men, and cast down 



"THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" 283 

the towers built by man ; all the slow conquests of the 
earth by art and science, from Eve cursed for seeking 
knowledge to Darwin cursed for finding it, have been 
achieved by man over obstruction from his own temples, 
turned to fortresses against the progress of their own 
builder and sustainer ; and yet man has patiently borne 
and suffered all these oppressions, served his hostile gods, 
and called himself a miserable sinner! The worst man 
known to the annals of crime never committed half the 
evil ascribed to the best god known to the fables of divin- 
ity. If the deified Jesus himself should really cast one 
goat, were it but a literal goat, to be tortured by devils 
through eternity, it would be greater wickedness than all 
the crimes of mankind put together, and the nearest crime 
to it would be to worship a being capable of such an atro- 
city. But I do not believe man ever really worshipped 
such a being; he has knelt before him, cowered before 
him, sacrificed himself before him ; but these gifts were 
and are apologies for not loving him. And finally our 
human martyr, who has borne upon himself the sins of 
his gods, is now ascribing to them all his own virtues. 

It would seem to have been full time when tidings came 
of gods bearing the sins and sorrows of humanity. Fore- 
shadowed in fables of Prometheus and Herakles, this idea 
first took shape in Buddhism and elsewhere made the 
early gospel of Christ. That gospel was speedily buried 
away beyond resurrection, and for sufficient cause ; it must 
have been fatal to the existence of a priesthood or an ec- 
clesiastical system. If it had been admitted that Jesus 
bore all the sins of the world, had paid all man's debts, 
suffered all his penalties and liabilities, the whole machin- 
ery of redemption would thus have been transferred from 
earth to heaven, and the vocation of the priesthood would 



284 "THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" 

have been gone. Paul and the earliest apostles had that 
faith in the absorption of all sacrifices into one, the divine 
sacrifice ; of all priests into one, the High Priest at God's 
right hand ; the whole thing was done and settled ; and 
all they had to do was to go through the world and tell 
the news, proclaim the glad tidings of a salvation accom- 
plished for all mankind, so that they might abandon their 
altars, do without priests, and pass their time singing their 
joy, and eating together the eucharistic symbols of this 
celestial sacrifice by which humanity had been ransomed 
from the dark and evil powers of nature. 

But such a transcendentalism as that could not last 
long amid hungry priests. The martyrdom of the god was 
but a brief interval in the eternal martyrdom of Man. A 
little space and the martyred god is himself turned into 
the exactor of human martyrdom. He ascends from his 
cross only to burden man again with the sins he had pro- 
fessed to bear, and to exact the debts he had professed 
to pay. Again patient man resumed his burden, again 
toiled to pay his debts to God for values never received ; 
and, while toiling under the burden, was good enough to 
praise God for having borne it an hour or two. 

These ancient fables speak of non-existent beings as ex- 
istent ; but in that they tell truer than our senses. These 
non-existent beings own two hundred millions of the public 
wealth in England, — enough to enrich every poor man in 
it, — and are still able to lock their people in prison who are 
disrespectful to their names. On the eve of the day of Cru- 
cifixion I attended the funeral of a noble woman who, forty- 
nine years ago, was the bride of the brave bookseller, James 
Watson. In the very month of his marriage her husband 
was sentenced to prison. He was as honest a man as ever 
lived, but he and his young wife had to pass their honey- 



"THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" 285 

moon exchanging notes and kind words through the grat- 
ings at Clerkenwell. Who parted, who so crucified those 
loving hearts ? Jesus. Watson sold Paine's " Age of Rea- 
son "; wherefore the crucified lover of enemies put him to 
pass a bitter winter in a fireless room, five feet by seven, 
sleep on straw, with insufficient food, in company of the 
morally and physically diseased. No such Jesus as that ever 
existed ; yet was he and still is he potent enough to do all 
that for the intimidation of thinking men. Watson diffused 
cheap literature among the people, published his unstamped 
"Poor Man's Guardian," and he and Hetherington — 
whose widow is still with us — -and five hundred other men 
were incarcerated by that same mythical phantasm that 
cursed the first giver and recipients of knowledge in Eden. 
And this season of the suffering forgiver of enemies finds 
him casting into prison three men stung into rebellion 
against an irreligious religion daring to claim his name ! 

As if man's earthly sufferings under his imaginary gods 
were not enough, it was forever dinned in his ears that, 
after all, his sacrifices would generally prove unavailing, 
and that there would be a Judgment Day when all his 
slips, mistakes, omissions of pious punctilio, would be 
punished with torments. Well, the Day of Judgment has 
already dawned ; in it man appears face to face with the 
gods, and he appears not as criminal but as accuser. Omar 
Khayyam, the Persian poet, seven centuries ago, saw that 
the need of forgiveness was not all on one side. 

O Thou, who man of baser clay didst make, 
And e'en in Paradise devised the snake ; 
For all the sin with which man's face 

Is blackened, man's forgiveness give — and take. 

But in seven centuries we have learned more than the 
great Persian knew ; we have learned that it is the sacer- 



286 "THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" 

dotal snake which devised a delusive Ghost in its own 
image that in man's terror his paradise might be stolen. 
Under many civilized disguises this prostration before 
deified baseness has gone on, but it draws to an end. Man, 
now cultured and scientific, is passing judgment on the 
phantasms of his ignorant worship, and into outer dark- 
ness they must go. Be not deceived about that, — they 
must go. If any man worship a deity that is the supreme 
expression of his thought, a deity that needs nothing from 
man, that deity may stand. If any man believes in an 
immortality which he has thought out, and which does 
not defraud this life of its equal sanctity, that may stand. 
V But the deities and doctrines rooted in no living thought 
or love, mere relics of the past, are already dead, fruitless 
branches, though they be not yet gathered for the burn- 
ings. 

It is very difficult at present to strike the balance be- 
tween human happiness and unhappiness, so heavily is 
man weighed down by sorrows for sins never committed, 
impoverished by sacrifices not required, oppressed by 
cares that are delusive, and foreboding of evils that can 
never occur. When that clear morning comes wherein 
man shall laugh with the sun at the ghosts and night- 
mares that torment him, nature will wear a very different 
aspect ; and this not only to the immediate victims of the 
delusions, but to those most free from them. For all are 
socially and politically bound up together, and a prepon- 
derance of insanity can make sanity miserable. It is the 
keenest pain to be in spiritual discord with neighbours, 
friends, relatives. Nor is it possible for any one to be 
completely free of the delusions around him. They linger 
in his nerves, in his sentiments, and perpetually tempt his 
weaknesses. 



"THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" 287 

How often do we hear even liberal people talking about 
human sin and sinfulness? There is no such thing. The 
definition of sin is transgression of God's law ; if any of a 
Creator's laws are transgressed, he alone can be blamed 
who created the transgressors. If there is any sin about 
human errors and misdeeds, that sin is rightly placed where 
the first Christians placed it, — on the shoulders of the 
crucified god. What man has to consider is solely the 
bearing of his action on his fellow man ; that may be evil, 
unjust, criminal ; but there is no sin about it, and all the 
feelings or retributions based upon other than practical 
human interests are gratuitous additions to the real evils 
of the world. It is high time the whole burden of sin were 
lifted from the soul of mankind, with all its related fic- 
tions, many of them represented in laws and customs by 
which life is restricted and depressed. 

Not long ago I read an essay on the self-sacrifice of 
Freethinkers, in which the writer estimated how much 
they lost by not believing in God and immortality. Let it 
be conceded ; but is not that loss enough without adding 
to it the hatred and contempt of their fellows? Why 
should those without Christian hopes not be pitied, — nay, 
why should they not be admired for surrendering so much, 
— by those who deem their doctrines so precious ? That 
would be the humane way, and it would be the usual way 
were it not for this silly notion about sin. It almost makes 
one blush to admit that there are still people who fancy 
that God is concerned with what people think about him, 
or do not think about him, and that to deny his existence 
is a sin. Poor God, what would he do without the aid of our 
demonstrations, and our pious editors, judges, and jailers ! 
When that load is lifted from the world, when all the 
intellectual virtues are encouraged without the slightest 



288 "THE MARTYRDOM OF MAN" 

reference to any heavenly or earthly authority ; when, as 
a natural consequence, all divine service turns to human 
service, all churches consecrated to humanity, the long 
martyrdom of Man will cease. So I firmly believe. It is 
an old discovery that man is nature in little, but it is a 
truth steadily dawning upon us that this small human 

■ compendium is stronger than the huge world it represents. 
Man is the natural master of the blind giant forces around 
him, by reason of the fact that in him their laws come to 
consciousness. He alone can see how and where to apply 
his force. The force of all the Alpine snow tumbled in 
avalanches, the volcanic force of Etna, are less effective 
than the force of a child's hand intelligently directed. 
Their stupendous force is utterly wasted ; yet is it subject 
to law, and man, by knowledge of their law, is able to 
make these blind Titans fight on his side against themselves. 
In this way man has largely mastered wind and wave, 

*^and many an evil in the world. If he still fails and suffers 
anywhere, it is in some region where he still prays instead 
of commanding. It is in some department where his real 
power, that is, the power of nature in conscious activity, 
is not put forth. The fear of some god higher than the 
God in himself arrests his genius and his omnipotence at 
that point. And there he must remain a martyr until he 
discovers that his pain and disease, his crimes and animal- 
isms, are due to his consecrated chaos, and will disappear 
when that is dethroned and mastered by the God in his 
own brain and heart. 



CONSOLERS 



CONSOLERS 

THERE is a book called a " A Search for Winter Sun- 
beams." It was written by an American politician, — 
a man who had passed most of his life as a busy partisan 
and member of Congress. Winter overtook him with fronts 
that fall upon the hair, and colds and coughs, and weari- 
ness of the brain, and he started out in search of sunbeams. 
He might have found the obvious sunbeams in the far 
south of his own country ; but the winter of his discontent 
would have followed him ; he would have been forced to 
make stump speeches amid the orange groves and pull 
party wires amid the bananas. So he came over to Europe, 
passed to the south and travelled from region to region 
precisely as the warmer sunbeams might lead him. But in 
the course of his journey he found that the sunbeams he 
was searching for were not all, nor chiefly, those which 
come straight from the sun. There were brighter and 
more healthful sunbeams which had been caught by art 
on its canvas, or stored in its sculptures ; sunbeams built 
up in the Alhambra, garnered in the gardens of Italy, in- 
carnate in the happy villages and populations of various 
climes. He forgot his party and politics, forgot his aches 
and pains, and became happy as the little child he placed 
as a vignette in his book, — a child trying to catch the 
sunbeams playing around its head. 

However, this traveller's book does not fulfil all that is 
suggested by the vignette. He has shown how a man of 
wealth and leisure may escape winter by travelling away 
from it, forget physical troubles by repairing to scenes 



292 CONSOLERS 

novel, amusing, and picturesque ; but he does not solve 
the problem how they who have not such advantages, help- 
less and weak as the child, may find sunbeams playing 
around their head, or how the beams may be captured. 
Still less has his light and merry search anything to say 
upon the deeper problem how amid winters of the heart, 
its sorrow and darkness, sunbeams of hope and consolation 
may be obtained. Who can tell us how to find winter sun- 
beams without leaving our own homes, and without for- 
getting griefs which will not be forgotten ? 

Another book I have lately read, " Rabbi Jeshua," — 
under which name an anonymous author disguises his 
portraiture of Jesus. He draws, without recourse to the 
supernatural, his Eastern pictures of the teaching of mul- 
titudes by the good Rabbi, and shows them uplifted by 
his voice, gladdened by his sympathy, healed by his wis- 
dom, and by reaction of their faith in him. Then the au- 
thor of the book describes himself as going about in this 
vast metropolis which professes the religion of that great 
and wise teacher, to find what impression has really been 
made by his life and thought. He goes to the church of 
the Ritualist, and of the Calvinist, and then to the lecture 
of the man of Science. But in none of these did he find 
anything that would bring comfort to the poor and un- 
happy. Then, as he goes on his way, disappointed and 
unsuccessful, he found in the streets a crowd surrounding 
a child that had lost its father. The Calvinistic divine, to 
whom he had been listening, came by, and said to the 
lost child: "This all comes of your sinfulness and per- 
verseness, your disobedience and ungratefulness. The bea- 
dle must now take you to the poorhouse." The priest 
came by, and said to the child : " Flee to the arms of the 
Church, repent with fasting and tears, submit yourself to 



CONSOLERS 293 

the direction of a ghostly father, and turn from the vani- 
ties of the world, and you will be happier than if you 
found your parents." The professor came up, and said : 
"Your father was in all probability an ape. His vital 
force has been translated into another mode of motion, and 
you will never see him again." The child was little con- 
soled or encouraged by these ; but a woman took the child 
to her heart, sought out the father, and placed the wan- 
derer in his arms. 

That parable, however, has one dreary defect. By the 
lost child is typified the human heart in its sorrow and 
helplessness, and we are left to sad surmises as to why it 
should be so. If it has any father, why should he fail to 
look after it ; why should he leave it to the woman's heart 
to seek it and save it? If he has been so careless of it, 
does he not deserve what the scientific lecturer said of him ; 
and would not the woman have done better to have sought 
help for the wanderer in human pity ? 

And, in fact, that is just where the human heart is seek- 
ing the lost child's father. The child wandered because 
the father wandered, — lost himself in the world of illu- 
sions, and went to find an Olympian Father in abstract laws 
of the universe, or in the dogmas that deified old personi- 
fications of them. The revival of ancient Hebraism brought 
on by Printing and Protestantism had the effect of almost 
destroying in English Christianity the result of the evo- 
lution by which Jahvd was superseded by the Father. We 
have derived so many political benefits from Printing and 
Protestantism that we do not always remember that their 
primary effect was to diffuse the Bible among all classes 
as an infallible revelation, raising the Old Testament 
into equality with the New, and so restoring Judaism in 
the form of Puritanism. By reason of its violence Puri- 



294 CONSOLERS 

tanism pervaded the whole Church ; Jahvd was restored 
to his throne after he had been bowed out by the early- 
Church, and after God the Father had been substituted. 
It must be credited to the founders of Christianity that 
they deliberately superseded the arbitrary elemental deity, 
the remorseless ruler by force and fear, with a title dis- 
tinctly human and tender, — Father. And all the move- 
ments of modern Liberalism, inside the Church and out- 
side, have been for the recovery of that early Christian 
idea of the Fatherhood of God. It is now the essential 
spirit of what is called Theism. However haloed with ab- 
stract speculations, this divine Father means the same 
thing, whether as First Person of the Trinity or as the 
parental deity of Channing ; he meant and means the ex- 
altation of the human heart, the apotheosis of Love. And 
Love is a deity acknowledged by many called Atheists. The 
difference between those who exalt Love and the Theists 
is that the former see it expressed in the eternal Life of 
Humanity, while the latter embody it in a Person. I am 
not concerned, at present, to balance their respective ar- 
guments or advantages, but only to point out that they are 
both parts of a general movement which identifies religion 
with the highest human spirit. That is the Father, that is 
the Saviour, and they are separated by an abyss from all 
deities like Jove and Jahv^, who were held not amenable 
to the morality or sentiment of mankind. To an ancient 
Jew or a modern Moslem, every Christian is an atheist or 
an idolater; worshipper of a man instead of the one Cre- 
ator and King of the universe. And it is perfectly true that 
the divine ideal of Christendom was in the beginning, and 
is now again, that of a good and kind Parent, of limited 
power, pitying and helping his children to the best of his 
ability. It is the worship of Love in its conflict with Ma- 



CONSOLERS 295 

levolence, of the good as opposed to the evil powers of the 
universe. Whereas the ancient Monotheism worshipped 
the Creator as source of Good and Evil alike. 

Practically, then, primitive Christianity, modern The- 
ism, and the religion of Humanity are substantially one 
in their distinction from the older pagan and Judaic ideas 
of deity, in that they find the object of worship in, or re- 
flected in, the highest nature of man, — of man as parent, 
man as sufferer for his fellows, man as a great Heart in 
the universe known only in the heart-beat of man. And this 
amounts to a feeling that the divine pity is coextensive 
with the pity of men and women, — unknown beyond that. 
All the ancient systems tended to lead mankind to this 
conclusion. Though they believed in Almighty Powers 
which sent forth destroying angels even in their own sun- 
shine, they did not love them. They identified them with 
their calamities, and looked to man for love and help. 
The late " George Eliot " is said to have remarked on the 
depth of pathos in the words of Job, — " Have pity, have 
pity on me. O ye my friends, for the hand of God hath 
touched me." Every touch of Jahv^'s hand meant trouble ; 
for pity Job appealed not there, but to his friends. And 
he might not have found them " miserable comforters " 
had they been sound-hearted men, true friends, instead 
of theologians bound to take sides with the Power that 
permitted his plagues, or, as they believed, directly sent 
them. 

And " miserable comforters " are they to this day, who 
are so fettered to the ancient Syrian deity that they must 
needs tell all sufferers that their afflictions come from God. 
Still the effect of their theology is to turn the heart away 
from that cruel power, with the cry, " Have pity, have pity 
on me, O ye my friends, for God hath none ! " And as 



296 CONSOLERS 

tlie heart of Job prepared the way for a new God, — the 
God of Love, the Father, — even now the suffering heart 
of the world is bringing us all once more to the same deity, 

— a deity known through the wisdom, tenderness, and 
sympathy working within mankind. 

When from this deity within man passes out into na- 
ture, a nature no longer overcast by any jealous Jove or 
theologic curse, he finds that it is full of beauty. Whereas, 
to one full of fear, and a sense of sin, the blue sky and 
the bright world seem a mockery, the heart which realizes 
the divinity in itself may freely seek its sunbeams even 
in winter; as it can find in every season its peculiar 
beauty and use, it can find even amid sorrow the consolers 
of sorrow. The reason why the consolations which may 
be derived from nature are not found is because there 
survives so long the habit of looking for them where they 
cannot be found any longer, — namely, in supernatural 
aids which prayer implies, and in providential succours 
which do not arrive. 

We have before us the too long neglected task of reso- 
lutely cultivating those parts of our nature which are the 
true antagonists of pain, disease, and grief. We have to 
turn and make acquaintance with the real Consolers, 

— the ministering angels which have so long sat veiled 
within and around us, unrecognized by our star-gazing 
eyes, their proffered resources unheeded and unenjoyed. 
When the Job of the present time is driven to cry, "Have 
pity, O ye my friends," he must first of all see that he 
is summoning his real friends, and not those pretended 
" comforters " which do but add to the weight of the hand 
that has smitten him, — comforters cruel as his plagues, 
telling him he is chastised for some secret guilt. He must 
summon his true friends, whose names are Courage, Cheer- 



CONSOLERS 297 

fulness, Hope, Good Humour, Prudence, Philosophy, Sym- 
pathy. There is a medical journal, the "Lancet," whose 
name suggests antiquated practice, but whose advice is 
sometimes wise. Let me read you what it says of " Good 
Spirits." 

With the aid or under the influence of " pluck," using 
that term in a modern sense, and in relation to the daily 
heroism of life in the midst of difficulties, it is possible 
not only to surmount what appear to be insuperable ob- 
structions, but to defy and repel the enmities of climate, 
adverse circumstances, and even disease. Many a life has 
been saved by the moral courage of a sufferer. It is not 
alone in bearing the pain of operations or the misery of 
confinement in a sick-room this self-help becomes of vital 
moment, but in the monotonous tracking of a weary path, 
and the vigorous discharge of ordinary duty. How many 
a victim of incurable disease has lived on through years 
of suffering, patiently and resolutely hoping against hope, 
or, what is better, living down despair, until the virulence 
of a threatening malady has died out, and it has ceased 
to be destructive, although its physical characteristic re- 
mained ? This power of good spirits is a matter of high 
moment to the sick and weakly. To the former it may 
mean the ability to survive, to the latter the possibility 
of outliving, or living in spite of a disease. It is, therefore, 
of the greatest importance to cultivate the highest and 
most buoyant frame of mind which the conditions will 
admit. The same energy that takes the form of mental 
activity is vital to the work of the organism. Mental in- 
fluences affect the system, and a joyous spirit not only 
relieves pain, but increases the momentum of life in the 
body. The victims of disease do not commonly sufficiently 
appreciate the value and use of good spirits. They too 
often settle down in despair when a professional judg- 
ment determines the existence of some latent or chronic 
malady. The fact that it is probable they will die of a 
particular disease casts so deep a gloom over their pros- 
pect that, through fear of death, they are all their lifetime 
subject to bondage. The multitude of healthy persons who 



298 CONSOLERS 

wear out their strength by exhausting journeys and per- 
petual anxieties for health is very great, and the policy 
in which they indulge is exceedingly shortsighted. Most 
of the sorrowful and worried cripples who drag out miser- 
able lives in this way would be less wretched and live 
longer if they were more hopeful. It is useless to expect 
that any one can be reasoned into a lighter frame of mind, 
but it is desirable that all should be taught the sustaining 
and often even curative, power of good spirits. 

That is better advice than the old Job-comforter kind : 
"Meditate on the grave," "Prepare to meet thy God," 
and so forth. There is a famous old book called Ars 
Moriendi^ the "Art of Dying," come down from a time 
when the Art of Living was to make life a mournful 
little portal to the grave. In it is a picture of a sick man 
with a devil at each ear : one says to him, " Think on 
your treasures "; the other, " Think on your friends." 
The moral seems to be that only devils would divert the 
dying man's mind from death and eternity. But time 
has transformed those devils into angels. Or, at any rate, 
if we enlarge the meaning of " treasures," it may be said 
that no advice to the sick can be wiser than that they 
should think upon what resources are left them, and 
especially on the friendship that is around them. 

The majority of troubles in this world come of ill 
health, but not the severest. It is difficult to call in 
Cheerfulness in the presence of death, or to summon 
Hope when the object of hope is in ruins. But there are 
resources even against such griefs as these. They are 
little drawn upon because of a certain pious superstition 
which leads many to nurse and prolong the grief of 
bereavement. A loving heart has such natural horror of 
disloyalty, and every sacred feeling so clings to the 
memory of a lost object of love, that Prudence and 



CONSOLERS 299 

Philosophy may seem cold-hearted when they attempt to 
heal the pains wrought by death. Nevertheless, they are 
not cold-hearted consolers when they forbid the heart to 
cherish any grief artificially, or when they counsel us to 
anticipate the healing touch of time by adapting life 
to what cannot be changed. There used to be a proverb 
in India which said, " Cool to the widow's heart is the 
flame of her husband's pyre." The widow was gladly 
consumed beside her dead husband because she believed 
herself going to share his paradise. Her faith remotely 
survives in the desire of some loving hearts to be buried 
alive, as it were, with their beloved dead, to take no inter- 
est in life, and partake no pleasure. But Prudence must 
plead that such is a loyalty unworthy of a worthy object, 
because it lowers the vitality on which duty depends, and 
extends an individual sorrow to others. We cannot suffer 
alone. The very sharpness of suffering ought to warn us 
not to let its shadow go too far, or remain too long to 
chill the happiness of others, or to paralyze our power of 
fulfilling the high ends of life. It might be difficult to 
attain calmness under bereavement when it was believed 
to be the chastising rod of a god. For then every afflic- 
tion meant a sin, and the afflicted felt that their own 
guilt had brought down the blow. Their mourning was a 
dismal penance. But in those who know that death, when 
not itself a relief, is only part of the unmastered evil in 
nature, — with no personal purpose in it at all, — there 
ought to rise a resolution to limit its effect as far as possi- 
ble. That Philosophy is not heartless which inspires a 
mourner to say, I will not add to the death of my dear 
one more deaths, — the death of Hope, of Helpfulness. 
Death shall not make all my home a grave. Death will 
draw us all beneath the ground soon enough anyway ; 



300 CONSOLERS 

but it shall not have more than its due, nor blight the 
blooms still alive in the sunshine. 

It is not to be supposed that sharp sorrow will philoso- 
phize. No doubt, in the gradual growth of a true religion, 
a purely human sense of mutual obligation, there will be 
developed resources of spiritual strength now little dreamed 
of ; then much that is now hard to reach will be instinct- 
ive. But whatever may be the calmness and grief that 
brave spirits may reach, there will never be any real con- 
solers of broken hearts except Love and loving work. In 
the Age of Reason people have got to be to each other all 
that guardian saints and Madonnas were supposed to be 
in the Age of Superstition. No doubt, those imaginary 
beings bring great relief to the millions that believe in 
them. Their faith clasps those phantoms till they live; 
their gracious faces look down from altars and walls, and 
say, — " We are not God, or we would heal your sick and 
raise your dead ; but we can feel for you, love you, and our 
love shall fiU up the vacancy left in your heart." 

The true friend stands between the hardness of nature 
and the soul its iron has entered ; and can do far more than 
any Madonna or saint. No parson's perfunctory solace, no 
general human sympathy, is adequate : but they who by 
love have won love, they who have bound to themselves 
the heart of a friend, will find even their desert putting 
forth flowers. And, because this is so, we should all culti- 
vate friendship to its fulness, knowing that to every life 
there must come dark days or years when the countenance 
of a friend must stand as the countenance of divine com- 
passion itself. Have we not read the tale of the prisoner 
of many years who, beholding no sign of life but a spider 
weaving its web across his window, kept up his courage 
by daily watching that ; and of him who from his fortress 



CONSOLERS 301 

cell could espy only a blue flower that every spring re- 
turned to bid him hope ? But what are these little signs 
of life and hope in nature compared with the loving look, 
the tender word, the warm hand which affection can bring 
to the gloomiest abode of grief ? 

" What can I say to console the sorrowful, the bereaved ? 
I cannot utter the old formulas, about resignation to the 
will of God, and meeting again in heaven : I cannot insult 
sorrow with cant ; what, then, have I to give ? " Nothing, 
unless you have a real heartfelt sympathy ; nothing, unless 
you do really feel the warm pulse beating and emotion 
swelling towards the sufferer ; but, if you have that to 
give, you need no words nor doctrines. The sinking soul 
will feel your sustaining power, and find a strength not 
to be given by any device or advice. 

Finally, let me say concerning the general presence of 
pain and evil in the world, that there is no reason that 
mind or heart should view it with despair. The thinker 
who has ceased to look upon special sufferings as provi- 
dential may more freely combat them, and more rationally 
interpret them. The savage who, whenever he burns his 
fingers, thinks it was done by a fire-god, will not learn the 
lesson nature has taught him about fire. He who has 
ceased to regard pain as the divine rod will study what 
pain really is, and the means of mitigating it. And already 
emancipation from superstition about pain has proceeded 
far enough for the mind to perceive many benefits flowing 
from it for the benefit of the world. This is especially true 
about death, even in its saddest aspects. When death 
seems premature, it is nearly always the arrest of some 
weakness or evil which might propagate itself and cause 
widespread evils. Our affections cling to the weak, the 
diseased, the insane even, perhaps even more than to our 



302 CONSOLERS 

more vigorous friends and relatives. We employ all medi- 
cal science to preserve them, at whatever risk to the com- 
munity. And in that we do well, for we throw a fair coun- 
terpoise against the forces of destruction. But while we 
resist these forces we need not hate them as Satanic pow- 
ers. They are engaged in promoting survival of health 
and happiness. They are arresting the transmission of dis- 
ease and pain. They are preventing the world's living en- 
ergies from being sacrificed to its invalidism. And though 
we must wrestle against such forces, we may remember 
that the same nature that inflicts pain gave us our hearts 
to pity it. If we did not help the sick and suffering, we 
should lose a more important health than that of the frame, 
— health of heart. Better an invalid world than a heart- 
less world. Therefore the human heart and mind, while 
wrestling with the dark agencies of pain and death, may 
not sorrow without hope. They are to be consoled by the 
thought and truth that by their failure the welfare of the 
world is promoted, as well as by their success. And I be- 
lieve that in the future, when the generation is born whose 
parents are Science and Humanity, there will be found a 
chloroform for grief as there is for physical pain ; it will 
be found in a nearer and more vital relation of the indi- 
vidual to the general human heart. When Humanity has 
become to each soul as the great being it loves and serves, 
to be loved as Christians love Christ, it will be an instinct- 
ive reflection that our private pain or grief is a shadow of 
the universal benefit. The coming man will not have to 
reach this view by long reasonings and experiences ; every 
heart will drink it in with the mother's milk ; every heart 
will be sustained by the feeling that, however lamentable 
the law, it is the law that the destructions of ignorance 
make the survivals of wisdom, the fatality of disease is its 



CONSOLERS 303 

means of extinction, and death the essential condition of 
real life. And this instinctive trust to an inevitable law 
that means general v?^elfare will no more impede the work 
of sympathy, love's effort to save, than belief in heaven 
impedes the same. What matters it to the mother that she 
believes her dying child will go straight to heaven ? She 
struggles to keep it with her all the same. Is it dead? 
Then she may rest upon her belief that it is in heaven and 
that God took it from her for some good reason. But the 
mother's love is a law, and will not surrender even to 
heaven, till vanquished. Just as little will those consider- 
ations of universal welfare which are taking the place of 
celestial visions affect the sentiment of personal love, or 
the services of sympathy ; only, when love is helpless to 
save, when the blow of nature has fallen, it will find in 
the truths of science equal consolers, as they whisper of a 
happier world which every pain is preparing, and a per- 
fected humanity in whose victory the sting of death is 
lost. 

But this consolation will not be like the resignation of 
blind faith to the incidental cruelties of the law as well as 
its benefits, — not resignation to the sting of death as well 
as to death itself. Death should have no sting. The laws 
of the universe work remorselessly, violently, without 
reference to man, except when man has had the wisdom 
to tame them. They are to be humanized by science and 
sympathy, so that there shall be no pain unsoothed by 
skill, no premature or violent death. That is the better 
world for which all good people are to work ; and none 
can better work for it than they who have suffered, and 
know best what the severities of rude nature are. There- 
fore the best consoler, after all, is loving work. Sorrow 
cannot utterly master any heart which is occupied with con- 



304 CONSOLERS 

genial work. No need that it be conventionally charitable 
work, for all true work benefits all. Only let it be loving 
work, — whether in the home or in the world, — employ- 
ing mind and powers, and it will console the heart. There 
will be in it, however unconsciously, a sense of doing 
something to soften life for somebody, to help others 
against such miseries as it has known, a sense of being in 
harmony with the great army of workers throughout the 
world steadily pressing back chaos, rescuing man from 
the harsh action of necessity by the arts that heal and 
soothe, the reforms that extend benefit ; a sustaining con- 
sciousness of fighting the good fight along with the noble 
army that ever cries, " Come, all ye faithful, all ye who 
suffer, and forget your private griefs in the doing of some 
work, however little, which shall help build the happier 
world that shall not know wrong, nor anguish, nor 
despair ! " 



THE MADONNA OF MONTBAZON 



THE MADONNA OF MONTBAZON 

MONTBAZON is an old castle, situated on a hill ris- 
ing beside the valley of the Vienne. Over a peace- 
ful valley of that region called the Garden of France, 
this castle frowned for centuries. For it was the strong- 
hold of a succession of half-barbaric dukes, who held the 
whole district in awe. When Tours was the central king- 
dom of France, and its princes and bishops were engaged 
in gradually subduing and harmonizing the surrounding 
dukes, perpetually rebelling and filling the country with 
terror, nearly the last castle to yield was Montbazon. Its 
warriors were fierce, exacted tribute from all around them, 
and carried feudalism into a time which found it extinct 
nearly everywhere else. There are many wild tales of fe- 
rocity haunting this now uninhabited castle. And these 
traditions converge finally into one of different character. 
It was said that a gay and worldly young nobleman, re- 
turning from the chase, or other expedition, found all still 
in the castle. Entering the saloon, behold a sight of hor- 
ror ! He had left there a young wife, to whom he was ten- 
derly attached, and now he found only her head, cut off 
from her body, lying on a golden dish. This never-explained 
tragedy so wrought upon him that he fell upon his knees 
and consecrated himself to a monastic life. He put on 
hair-cloth and cowl ; threw aside his sword and his splen- 
dour; abandoned his castle. Multitudes were drawn to 
visit this aristocratic hermit, and it ended in his establish- 
ing a sort of religious order. It was a particularly ascetic 
order ; no luxury was allowed, and of course no marriage ; 



308 THE MADONNA OF MONTBAZON 

its members were entirely separated from tlie world. Such 
is the tradition, probably mythical, but not the less charac- 
teristic of the reaction pretty sure to follow a long history 
of luxury, lust, and ferocity. Throughout that region of 
France, which for centuries was more than any other given 
up to excesses, now largely prevails the order of Perpetual 
Adoration. The members of this order devote themselves 
to perpetual adoration of the Virgin Mary, their aves and 
prayers never ceasing for an instant. They drill themselves 
into absolute indifference to persons and things around 
them. If any young sister of this society is detected in 
having the slightest interest in anything or anybody ; if 
she gets fond of another sister, or prefers one abbess to 
another, or one confessor above another, or gets to like 
her own room more than another room, she is instantly 
removed to some distant place, far from her preferences. 
This kind of pietism belongs to the same type as the 
self-annihilation which makes the old Buddhist ideal. But 
there is a difference between the conditions under which 
it was reached in the East and in the West. In the East 
this religion of self -extinction would seem to have come of 
satiety. It is related to the worst feature of Oriental so- 
ciety. The people of India, for instance, marry when they 
are children, and they are old before Europeans are mid- 
dle-aged. The resources and enjoyments of life are often 
exhausted when they ought to be beginning. In the legend 
of Buddha it is related that as a young Prince, with al- 
ready several wives, every art was brought to amuse and 
delight him. On one occasion all the beautiful dancers 
were brought, and they danced until the Prince withdrew. 
Then the dancers sank about the floor and slumbered. 
The Prince did not sleep. He arose in the night and went 
to the room that had been the scene of the revelry, and 



THE MADONNA OF MONTBAZON 309 

looked at the dancers. Some of them were snoring dis- 
agreeably; all were lying in ungraceful postures, their 
mouths open, their sparkling eyes closed, their bloom gone. 
The Prince was disgusted; he resolved that he never 
wanted to see them again ; he left the palace and became 
a hermit. It was not so that the Prince of Montbazon be- 
came a hermit, or that societies of self-annihilation arose 
in the Garden of France. It was not by the exhaustion of 
desire, but by religious reaction from its excesses, that 
western asceticism arose. The desire remained as strong 
as ever, and the denial of it could not have been main- 
tained even in convents had there not been joined with it 
a prospect of paradise, where the desires would be more 
completely satisfied. When, a few years ago, the play of 
" Paradise '' was crowding a Paris theatre, a grand ballet 
of angels foreshadowed that dream of heaven for which 
Europe once gave up the world. Buddha gave it up in 
order to be forever free of such pleasures, which had be- 
come wearisome to him. Or rather such is the sense of the 
legend, which probably reports not so much the great 
man himself as the system he abandoned. 

From the distance of a league I first saw Montbazon. 
With that perspective the remnant of the castle appeared 
as a square pedestal supporting a gigantic image. Ap- 
proaching nearer, the castle was seen to be entirely covered 
with vines, mosses, flowers, leaving hardly visible its aper- 
tures and turrets, from which archers once rained death on 
besiegers. Above the high walls so sweetly foliated, stood 
the image, — the largest bronze statue in Europe, — the 
Madonna of Montbazon. She overlooks the entire coun- 
try which she is supposed to protect. There where ancient 
Romans set the god of War, and where for a thousand 
years only that martial inspiration was known, the Ma- 



310 THE MADONNA OF MONTBAZON 

donna stands with her child. Hotels and streets are named 
after the image ; processions circle around it : it is a land- 
mark for many miles around ; Athena on her Parthenon 
was hardly more reverenced. A landmark, too, for the 
procession of the ages and generations of mankind is that 
Madonna. So she will appear if seen in spiritual as well as 
aerial perspective. 

On the close view there was something rather amusing 
about the image. The head was encircled by what seemed 
a strange kind of halo, made of darting rays of light. But 
examination proved these to be the diverging points of a 
lightning-rod. The rod ran up the Madonna's back and 
branched out into a circlet of points. It seemed rather 
droll that the pious people should have thought it neces- 
sary to protect their protectress, to shield the Queen of 
Heaven from the lightnings of Heaven. I went away to 
an old barrow, piled up by a prehistoric people over their 
dead, and from that monument, compared with which 
Montbazon Castle is a thing of yesterday, gazed through 
an hour of the summer morning upon the stronghold so 
tenderly invested with vine and blossom, and upon its vic- 
torious Madonna and Child. The castle, long associated 
with traditions of brutality and terror, originally built 
without trace of beauty or of anything but force and for- 
tification, now looked gentle with its green raiment and 
its statue, and it had a soft voice, too, on the morning air, 
which said : " After all, these grim walls had their task 
in the world, and have performed it. My dukes and war- 
riors were ferocious, but they were not so savage as those 
who raised that mound on which you sit; even so much 
skill and wit as made these walls grew here by superi- 
ority to that which could only heap up battlements of 
mud. The savage strength passed before the barbarian ; 



THE MADONNA OF MONTBAZON 311 

that again before the semi-barbarian ; and I also, when my 
hour struck, dismissed my fierce dukes, turned into a 
hermitage, replaced the songs of revelry with saintly 
hymns ; and behold me now, further transformed, friend 
of the flower and the bird, my mission to bear the gentle 
mother and child aloft over the hall where a fair woman's 
blood was the last sacrifice to the god of War." So spake 
the old fortress ; and its voice repeated the testimony of 



Seen, then, in the perspective of time and history, what 
was this scene ? It was meant only to commemorate the 
spot where the last of its dashing nobles became a saint. 
But they who raised that statue builded better than they 
knew. Humanity planning above their unconscious hands 
slowly raised there a sign for all nations in the image with 
its coronet of defences against the lightning. It is Woman, 
her feet set upon ancient feudalism, her head crowned by 
science. 

From the dawn of history until now, every reign of 
savagery and barbarism has disappeared under the soft 
siege of the Mother and her Babe. I do not mean that it was 
under the gentle influence and persuasion of woman, but 
through the inevitable necessities of maternity and of the 
home. Women also have been warlike ; there have been 
veritable as well as mythical Amazons. Under the amours 
of Mars and Yenus the ancients represented the admira- 
tion of women for warlike exploits. But experience stead- 
ily modified and mastered that passion. It was found 
that so the home could not be built, and the babe reared. 
Where the maiden admired, the mother mourned. Even 
war itself requires the birth and growth of men, and for 
this were demanded intervals in the wild play of destruc- 
tion, and households protected from the desolations of war. 



sn THE MADONNA OF MONTBAZON 

The Madonna of Montbazon rightly holds under foot the 
barbaric fortress, whose ruin meant the security of the 
babe she holds. One or the other had to be sacrificed, 
the babe or the battlement. Yet as a type of woman she 
no less needs that crown of science which Franklin wove 
for her head. For until the mother is so crowned she and 
her child cannot be protected from the storms of elemen- 
tal nature which beali upon their heads, nor from the par- 
alyzing dogmas related to those elements. The lightning 
can strike her and the babe in many ways. It is not only 
as it leaps from the cloud that the thunderbolt may lay 
her low, but as it means to her the wrath of a god before 
whom she is abased. All the so-called gods before which 
fear and ignorance ever cowered are personifications of 
the lightning and similar perils of nature. These survive 
in Jove, Jahve, in all the gods of wrath and vengeance ; 
and long after men have learned how to ward off the ele- 
mental dangers which originated their gods and demons, 
they kneel before their names in mysterious terror. Light- 
ning-rods may protect homes from thunderbolts, but what 
shall protect souls from superstitions born of such bolts, 
and from the ignorance which leads men and women to 
confront natural perils with impotent prayers ? 

Superstitions survive longest in women, because they 
beset the most delicate nerves, and they appeal to senti- 
ment. For untold ages submission has been the badge 
of woman by reason of her physical weakness; ages of 
masculine supremacy have drilled her into the habit of 
unquestioning sufferance. Accepting the creed as com- 
manded, conscious that the God she is bidden adore has 
given her the heavier weight of pains and labours for no 
discoverable reason, she has gone on for centuries train- 
ing her child in the same trust to prayer and faith instead 



THE MADONNA OF MONTBAZON 313 

of to the intellectual and moral forces which really com- 
mand the world. So are she and her child still struck by 
lightnings from the ancient heavens, — weakened, lowered, 
impoverished in mind and heart, by perversions of their 
power. 

So, at least, it has been for a long time ; but I trust a 
new day is dawning. The Madonna's protecting crown 
seemed to signal the clearer day. It is something when 
a Catholic priesthood and peasantry recognize facts suffi- 
ciently to admit that their gods require scientific protection. 
It is much to see the Madonna's halo transformed into a 
contrivance of steel representing man's power to snatch 
from Jove his mismanaged bolts. It is but one small in- 
stance out of many in which science is coming to the 
rescue of woman from what was long believed her divine 
curse. It is within our own memory that when science 
came with its anaesthetic to mitigate the pains of mater- 
nity, superstition trembled, and pulpits denounced that 
alleviation as a defiance of Jahve, who had laid those pains 
on woman as her curse. But Franklin had been similarly 
denounced for defiance of Heaven in meddling with the 
lightning. As mastery of the lightning took its place even 
above the Madonna's sovereignty, so has chloroform taken 
its place above Eve's penalty. The old spell begins to lift. 
It will lift more and more till the power of woman — the 
finest power in the world — is set free. 

That freedom involves a great deal. How much, we 
may partly estimate in the extent to which the interests 
of the home have mastered the wild passions of mankind. 
Though political passions, excluding the direct influence 
of woman, have managed to maintain the old standard of 
force and the military method, they have been compelled 
to keep their wars far away from our homes. The ugly 



314 THE MADONNA OF MONTBAZON 

demon of bloodshed must keep his face far enough away 
to be forgotten. The social standard is that of the home. 
It is love, peace, and happiness, and steady improvement 
without violence. All we need for further advancement is 
that the family spirit, the heart and mind of woman, shall 
be brought to bear as fully and powerfully upon intellect- 
ual errors as it has been upon the social ferocities on which 
her foot is securely planted. In the "Agamemnon" of 
-^schylus it is shown that the first signs of compassion 
on the hard face of Greek theology were associated with 
their two chief goddesses, Athena and Artemis. First 
Athena manifests human pity, and by her intercession 
Artemis is softened : and in the later play of the same 
poet she softens the Furies themselves. The masculine 
deities remained hard, unsympathetic, unyielding in their 
cruel pursuit of mortals. Their ferocity proved fatal to 
their own altars. Happily, these deities had admitted 
" woman's suffrage " in the celestial councils, and it ended 
in a female dynasty. One after another the gods faded 
out of human belief, and passed into mythological extinc- 
tion ; until a day came when Napoleon asked Laplace why, 
in his book on the Mechanism of the Heavens, the name 
of God was not mentioned. " I have no need of that hy- 
pothesis," answered the man of science. In fact, the hy- 
pothesis had ended long before ; the only god thenceforth 
to be sought was the Divine Love, that principle which 
man feels to be too good to die, though all else fail, — 
the Love which immortalizes him. This inward deity lived 
on through the crumbling of blood-stained altars, to sur- 
vive in the Madonna of Catholicism and in the Supreme 
Love of Theism. And such has been of old the course of 
all deities related in time and essence to that feudal castle 
over which the Madonna of Montbazon triumphs. You 



THE MADONNA OF MONTBAZON 315 

will find at the beginning of old theologies some shadowy- 
name, some Brahm or Saturn, a divinity fallen asleep, 
shelved, without temples, who, though nominally con- 
nected with the later deities, was really superseded by 
them altogether. It is these latter, compassionate saviours, 
incarnate in humanity by human mothers, who inherit the 
earth, leaving the elemental and barbaric deities to be 
mythologic monuments of man's steady recoil from un- 
moral force. 

The recoil is to go farther. There are other gods, aye 
and goddesses, in whom survive traits of the ancient fear 
and cruelty, which must pass under foot of the maternal 
nature so soon as that nature is crowned by science. For the 
love and wisdom which are to save the world from actual 
evil cannot much longer be identified with any high name 
of man or woman. The best of these have been defiled and 
changed into symbols of the power that would crush us. 
The gentle Jesus has been made into an awful judge con- 
signing souls to hell. His lowly mother has been made 
into a Queen who affronts every mother by the false claim 
that every mother is impure but her own immaculate self. 
The Madonna of Montbazon is now a queen, her child a 
king. These ancient symbols have followed the formations 
of human society. In the beginnings of religions we find 
deified mothers. It is because society was patriarchal. The 
parent was a despot. When government became monarch- 
ical, the father became a king, the mother a queen. So the 
Catholic Madonna is no longer a mother ; she is a Queen. 
And because kings and queens were despotic in that era, 
the Madonna in the north was swept away by the Protest- 
ant revolution for freedom. So she and her child cannot 
represent the recovered ideal of the home. They have done 
their work, like the feudal ruin on which they stand ; like 



316 THE MADONNA OF MONTBAZON 

that they must take their place beneath ideals higher than 
themselves, the maternal principle crowned with the pro- 
tecting science of humanity. 

Nor let it be understood that this maternal principle and 
spirit are confined to any sex. It is not confined to woman, 
nor is it limited to mothers. It is the maternal principle ; 
it is the spirit of love in man or woman which folds its 
arms around the world and bears humanity upon its heart 
forever. It is the supremely moral force that flows out, 
like the sap that is feeding the varieties of earthly growth, 
and raising death into life. This is the force which requires 
the protection and guidance of right knowledge. Other- 
wise it will feed weeds as well as flowers, and poisons as 
much as fruits. I honour the mother ; she is girt round 
with a beautiful mystery of deep and suffering love which 
may well bring a man to his knees : but maternity itself 
requires the direction of science. Without that direction 
it may not only bring disease and pain into the world : it 
may not only weigh down its own energies with offspring 
it is powerless to support and educate, but it may merely 
go on adding to the amount of ignorance and error in 
the world, and swelling the obstructions to progress. The 
mother with her babe is ever the creator of the world. 
That which she instils into that child's mind will make 
or mar the generation of which it is born. So the mother 
needs knowledge. And the science of the world can do 
no better service to mankind than to weave about her brain 
the crown of knowledge, which shall give security to the 
holy forces working in her heart. 

Yet, as I say, spiritual maternity is not confined to her. 
The forces which find in her their obvious type animate 
all the love, the devotion, the self-denying fortitude, and 
affection, which, in hearts of man and woman, make the 



THE MADONNA OF MONTBAZON 317 

living atmosphere of the world. And while these forces, 
allied with wisdom, set free by knowledge, build the 
fairer world, they are the very powers which in misdirec- 
tion sustain superstition, cause desolation and sorrow, and 
cast before swine the heart's priceless pearls. In a The- 
istic Annual issued by the Brahmos of India, I read an 
article on the Divine Mother, in which the writer expressed 
his belief that Brahmos ought to call god their Mother in- 
stead of Father. He says : " The Christian Madonna and 
Hindu Amba convey all that is holy." Amba is a general 
word for Mother, but it is also the name of a mythological 
character. She was the reverse of that which is conveyed 
in the term mother. She was disappointed in her affections, 
and retired to a forest, where she concentrated all her heart 
and soul into prayer for one thing. That was that she 
might obtain revenge on the king who had been the means 
of her disappointment. Siva, god of destruction, heard 
her ; but be could not grant her prayer so long as she was 
a woman. She ascended the pile, was burned, and born 
again as a man. In that form revenge was obtained; the 
author of her misfortune was pierced with arrows. It is to 
be hoped the Brahmos will never call their divine mother 
Amba. For that ancient picture of a woman so potent in 
prayer, so vehement in her love, so full of devotion, that 
she was able to transform her nature and turn all her wo- 
manly qualities to the deadly work of the destroying deity, 
is precisely the picture of what the heart powers become 
when left without the regulation of wisdom. The best, 
when corrupted, is the worst. Neither the Brahmos nor we 
can get any power which shall help us to restrain ourselves 
and guide others, by repairing to the exhausted cisterns of 
mythology. Amba and the Madonna are mere mythologic 
signs from the past to the present. We need real powers 



318 THE MADONNA OF MONTBAZON 

to meet conditions as serious as any whicli the world has 
ever known. In the progress of the world the cry is again 
heard ; " They have taken away my Lord, and I know 
not where they have laid him." Who are they that have 
done this ? No one, and yet all. The march of the world, 
the unconscious movements of mind, the minglings of 
races, interchanges of ideas, have availed, against all op- 
posing efforts, to remove from the human heart its former 
lord, and leave his tomb empty. Only a few grave-clothes 
remain where once was a source of restraint and awe, of 
authority and hope. Nothing can be more serious than the 
moral situation of to-day, with its religious interregnum, 
wherein the passions of men are as keen as ever, their op- 
portunities multiplied, their restraints reduced to a mini- 
mum. But I believe that again the ancient traditions of 
the world will be justified, that the seed of the woman 
shall bruise the serpent's head. It is plain that human so- 
ciety must hereafter depend upon friendliness between man 
r/ and man, upon obligations of honour, upon sentiment, sym- 
pathy, and the love of peace ; it must depend on these be- 
cause the old hopes and fears are gone ; and it is difficult 
to see where the new resources are to be found except in 
that sex with which those qualities are constitutional. No 
doubt there are unwomanly women as there are unmanly 
men ; but the exceptions do but confirm the rule that with 
women are preeminently associated the moral and spiritual 
qualities which alone can make life worth living. By such 
elements, which have their completest culture in the home, 
the very heart and brain of woman have been organized. 
She is a result of their evolution. Where ancient theology 
expressed this fact in a physical way, seeing in the Ma- 
donna and her babe literal incarnations of the divine, reason 
sees a spiritual truth. The seed of the woman is the moral 



THE MADONNA OF MONTBAZON 319 

genius of woman, that whicli she implants in the heart and 
mind of childhood, and diffuses throughout the social world 
of which she is the centre. To the emotions and principles, 
which can alone build homes and preserve them happ}^ 
she is pledged not only by her nature, but by the perpet- 
ual necessity that is upon her. Her all depends upon them. 
Should such qualities fail, her whole sphere were a deso- 
lation. But under the new conditions her influence must be 
largely increased. 

And how is that increase to be secured ? Not merely by 
giving her a vote, though that would be just and right. 
Still more, as I think, by increasing her resources of know- 
ledge and culture, whereby she may grow with the grow- 
ing world, and adapt her influence and strength to every 
new phase of the world's unfolding thought and power as 
it arrives. Because our predecessors did not recognize this 
we have come upon a serious peril, — that is, a separation 
between the masculine and the feminine characters. There 
is nothing more painful and more dangerous than to find 
young men outgrowing their mothers intellectually, and 
coming to look down upon their sisters. To look down 
upon those to whom they once looked up is to part with the 
true restraining grace of their lives, though they are apt 
to discover that only by long and often sad experience. 
The time arrives in many a man's life when too late he 
realizes that the old feeling he had when his mother was 
his holy Madonna belonged to the depths of his being, and 
he would be glad to give up much of his learning and all 
of his pride to bring it back again. But it ought not to 
have been lost, and it will not be lost when parents real- 
ize that unless daughters grow in knowledge sons cannot 
grow in morality. Only by an equal culture can the high 
human powers commingle harmoniously, mutually restrain- 



320 THE MADONNA OF MONTBAZON 

ing and guiding each other. If the scholar and thinker is 
to be also dutiful and true, loyal in love and friendship, 
kind and pure in life, it will be because these influences 
have addressed him in scholarly and thoughtful ways. 
They cannot be derived from those in whom they are 
associated with ignorance or with beliefs inferior to his 
own. The Madonna of the future is to be rescued from 
the priest ; she is to be raised above the feudalism of dog- 
mas, however covered with sentimental iv}^ and flowers, 
and her head is to be crowned with the nimbus of know- 
ledge. 
^ Take care, ye fathers, that your daughters are edu- 
cated ! Do not suppose that it is less important than that 
your sons should be educated. If there be any difference, 
it is of paramount importance that your daughters should 
be of trained intelligence. For Madonnas they must be 
to many, either of the old kind to foster superstition and 
add a grace to error, or of the new and human kind, to 
accompany each step of social growth and keep it true to 
the moral sentiment which alone preserves its purity and 
beauty. And you, ye mothers, see that you are faithful to 
this new world, upon which we are all entering by inevi- 
table necessity! Try to recognize, and to realize, that 
things past are past, including many notions in which you 
may have been brought up. Do not cling to methods failed 
or failing, however sanctified in your memory ; give up the 
rod that spoils the child ; give up the outgrown creed he 
is sure to laugh at when he gets older ; give up the prayer 
which falsely teaches him that God will do for him the 
good work which is to be done by himself or not at all. 
Study well, study night and day, how you may instil into 
the minds of your children right principles, which are to 
mould and bless those who shall bless or curse your name 



THE MADONNA OF MONTBAZON 321 

when you are in your graves. And do not be afraid if 
you find they must be new principles, in adaptation to the 
world's new thoughts and conditions. 

And to you, young men and young women, my word shall 
be, take care that you forsake not the refining influences 
which alone can make life sweet and pure and really happy. 
Do not imagine because you have reached a phase of growth 
when you can rejoice in your young strength, or in your 
beauty, or in your intellect, that you have no use for those 
homely virtues and qualities which belong to the humble 
fireside and the familiar tasks of life. Further phases will 
come. The beauty will ripen and decline. The expanding 
intellect will find itself needing a heart to lean on. The 
finest flower of body or mind can find in love alone its fra- 
grance. The womanly soul will need some manliness to bear 
its best fruit, and the manly will require womanly elements 
to humanize its strength. And so ends my parable of the 
Madonna crowned by science, treading down all hardness 
and barren force, and my parable of the babe she bears, with 
whom is the hope of the world. 



ELLEN DANA CONWAY 



ELLEN DANA CONWAY* 

BORN IN CINCINNATI, JUNE H, 1833 ; DIED IN NEW YORK, 
DECEMBER 25, 1897 

ALTHOUGH her illness lasted nineteen months, it was 
painful only at intervals, and consistent with happi- 
ness in her family and friends. In December, however, the 
distress increased, and she wrote to an old friend : " Life 
would be charming, but for these pains. After all, sixty- 
four is a good old age — and life's duties done. I now desire 
to go to sleep, and wake up no more." 

A little Christmas-tree for our grandchild had been pre- 
pared, and on Christmas Eve the invalid requested that baby 
should at once receive her toys. " I prefer that it should be 
to-day." Little Mildred, fifteen months old, was soon in full 
glee amid her gifts, and her grandmother smiling upon her, 
— receiving her kisses. This was the last afternoon of happi- 
ness. On Christmas morning, about dawn, she persuaded 
me that the death we had combated hour by hour for nine- 
teen months must now be received as a friend. " You would 
not prolong my life if you realized how I need release. I can- 
not w^ait longer. You will now have to take care of your- 
self." At noon she sank into slumber, and did not wake 
again. No struggle, no slightest quiver, indicated the tran- 
sition from sleep to death. The lines of pain were smoothed 
away. The face resumed its youth, under the halo of gray 
hair, and lilies of the valley were laid upon her breast. 

^ Privately printed for distribution among" personal friends, somewhat in 
answer to the innumerable telegrams and letters of sympathy and admira- 
tion received at the time of Mrs. Conway's death. 



326 ELLEN DANA CONWAY 

The long prostration was not without much sunshine. 
Her practical wisdom was always able to turn misfortune 
to some account. Some weeks before her death she said to 
me, " In this trouble I have found something good." This, 
indeed, I had often perceived. Through all her active years 
she had been living for others, and when at last her hands 
were folded, it was with an almost infantine surprise that 
she saw others living for her. Every day was fragrant with 
tokens of the affection she had inspired in all hearts that 
knew her. Hundreds of letters came to express gratitude 
for benefits she had forgotten, and happiness found by her 
help. On her characteristic humility was now forced some 
recognition of the fruits her life had borne. 

Her beautiful life, her truth, her unwearied charities, 
proceeded from her own heart. They were not inspired by 
any thought of reward on earth or in heaven. During all 
her illness she never intimated to me, or, so far as I am 
aware, to any one, an inclination to speculate about the 
future. About two months before her death I told her 
a happy dream I had, and asked her if she believed in im- 
mortality. She answered, " I know nothing about it. Dur- 
ing my illness I also have had dreams and visions, but they 
have not suggested immortality. The chief thing is duty." 
Her sense of duty, her unselfish nature, and instinct of 
helpfulness, developed from childhood in perfect freedom 
of heart and mind, found ample fields for congenial work, 
and had long become to her a religion too absorbing and 
satisfying to admit of much interest in problems beyond 
her powers. At the same time she was careful for the feel- 
ings of those to whom such matters were of vital impor- 
tance. Of the article of death she was absolutely without 
fear or dread. She had desired to live that she might ac- 
complish something; but when it was medically decided 



ELLEN DANA CONWAY 327 

that her strength could never be recovered, she would at 
anytime have welcomed death but for the sake of those who 
clung to her. " Would it not be better that I should go in 
peace?" But her peace of mind remained to the end. The 
feebler voice still spoke with interest of her friends and 
any events that concerned them, and her pencil was busy 
with cheerful notes to them, — some so recent that cheerful 
replies arrived after her death. 

In November she felt that her life would close with the 
year, and as if preparing her usual Christmas donations 
gathered together her jewels, heirlooms, and other little 
treasures, which were distributed as souvenirs among her 
relatives and friends. This she did almost merrily. Though 
it was necessary to conceal our anguish, she could not fail 
to know what the approaching change must mean for her 
devoted children and her husband. For me she had or- 
dained the work of writing out my " Keminiscences," and 
on this task I entered during her life, submitting to her in 
July several chapters, preceded by this dedication : — 

" In response to your desire, my wife, I undertake to 
record the more salient recollections of my life. It is a life 
you have made happy, and never unhappy save by the 
failure of your health. Its experiences during forty years 
have been yours also, and on the counsel and judgment 
which have never been wanting at my side I can happily 
still rely in living over again in our joint memory the 
events deemed worthy of record. 

" Let me obey my own heart, and secure the favour of 
many hearts that have known your friendship and wit- 
nessed your life, in America and Europe, by writing your 
name on a work as yet unwritten, to which — because it is 
an enterprise near your heart — I now dedicate myself.'* 

On Christmas Day, in a city gay with birthday celebra- 



328 ELLEN DANA CONWAY 

tions of one said to have healed the sick and raised the 
dead, I sat beside my dead wife, and recalled the words 
ascribed to Martha, " Lord, if thou hadst been here, my 
brother had not died." But I said, " If thou hadst been 
Lord, this woman had not died." 

Love enough was here ; science was here ; but love and 
knowledge have not yet mastered those blind, unguided 
forces by which hearts are broken hourly, and which have 
struck down this great-hearted woman in the midst of her 
happiness and usefulness. That she found "something 
good" in her trouble was because she was able to put 
something good into it; and I, bereft and broken, must 
try to do the same. But I shall not ascribe any providen- 
tial purpose to the diseases and griefs that desolate man- 
kind, and of themselves work no moral benefit at all, but 
tend to sap the mind, lower courage, and embitter the 
heart. 

MoNCURE D. Conway. 

305 West 70th Street, New York. 



INTERNATIONAL PEACE AND 
ARBITRATION 



ADRESSE AU CONGRfeS DE LA PAIX^ 

REUNI A PARIS, AU MOIS d'OCTOBRE, 1900 

MESSIEURS, — Les armements des nations, sans 
cesse augmentes de siecle en si^cle, ont atteint leur 
plus complet d^veloppement a une epoque oii la conscience 
populaire se r^ volte contre I'effusion du sang et oii la paix 
est, plus que tout, I'intdr^t supreme de Thumanit^. Bien 
que de tels armements soient bas^s theoriquement sur le 
pretexte qu'il faut pourvoir ndcessairement a une legitime 
defense — car c'est la la seule justification admissible de la 
guerre — le fait de voir que, chez certaines nations peu 
exposdes a une invasion, ils d^passent en puissance ce qui 
serait n^cessaire pour la defense, et que chez d'autres ils 
sont portds au plus haut point et forcement dispropor- 
tionnds aux forces n^cessaires pour repousser les seuls 
ennemis dont on puisse supposer une attaque, tout cela 
prouve que Taugmentation des dtablissements militaires 
et navals est due a de tons autres interets que ceux de la 
defense. Ils sont le refuge et la seule ressource de plusieurs 
milliers d'hommes sans carri^re ; ils soutiennent un grand 
nombre d'industries ; ils creent comme des royaumes oii 
I'ambition personnelle pent ais^ment trouver encourage- 
ment, titres, rang, privileges, a une epoque oii le vieux 
regime aristocratique a perdu toute autorite et va perdant 
son prestige. 

^ A congress of many individuals and representatives of societies from 
different countries came together in Paris in 1900. Mr. Conway was one of 
the representative Americans attending, and presented this plan and ex- 
planation. The elimination of war by both natural and methodical means 
was, perhaps, the chief aim of Mr. Conway's later life. 



332 ADDRESS TO A PEACE CONGRESS 

Tout d'abord, ce sont les armements seuls qui maintien- 
nent des rangs parmi les nations. Si toutes les Puissances 
desarmaient, I'egalit^ s'^tablirait entre les Nations, petites 
ou grandes, riches ou pauvres, et c'est la ce que les grandes 
nations ne veulent pas admettre. Les Gouvernements, 
quels que soient les sentiments personnels des hommes qui 
les dirigent, sont f orcement soumis a cette theorie qui fait 
de la force de chacun la mesure de son droit et donne pour 
appui a sa propre volonte la volonte divine. L'orgueil 
d^guise sous le nom de patriotisme, regoi'sme deguise sous 
le nom de religion, qui poussent les peuples a v^nerer le 
drapeau — en dehors de toute idee de justice et de gran- 
deur morale — font jusqu'a un certain point de chaque 
drapeau le centre et la source d'une hostilite entre nations 
— la Crete d'un coq jetant son d^fi a tons les tas de sable 
d'alentour. Et, bien que les gouvernements puissants 
montrent toujours plus d'aversion a entreprendre una 
vraie guerre contre des nations dont la force est a peu 
pr^s egale a la leur, ils s'efforcent generalement d'imposer 
leur volonte aux autres par I'etalage mena9ent de leur 
superiority militaire et navale. Nous vivons sous une esp^ce 
de r^gne international de la Terreur. 

Ainsi, alors que la supreme interet materiel des peuples, 
a notre ^poque de developpement incessant de I'industrie 
et du commerce, exige le maintien d'une paix complete, il 
faut, pour les enormes interets engages dans des etablisse- 
ments guerriers, I'acceptation presque universelle d'une 
r^gle de grandeur nationale bas^e sur la force materielle. 
Et ce fait est si general que dans la plupart des guerres les 
peuples ont et^ amenes, contrairement a leurs sentiments 
et a leurs interets, a consentir a I'effusion du sang, parce 
qu'on a nourri en eux la fiction que leur honneur national 
^tait en jeu. 



ADDRESS TO A PEACE CONGRESS 333 

II va de soi qu'une question de point d'honneur entre 
deux nations ne saurait etre r^solue en prouvant que I'une 
est superieure a I'autre par sa puissance de massacre. II est 
de meme Evident qu'une nation ne pent ^tre le legitime 
juge dans sa propre cause. Toutefois, en I'absence de toute 
methode qui etablisse une regie d'honneur humaine au- 
dessus de I'orgueil national, la r^gle de la force brutale 
subsiste, et en I'absence de tout tribunal impartial qui 
mette en ^chec I'^goisme national, on laisse chaque gou- 
vernement juger sa propre cause sans appel. 

Ces anomalies ont ^te reconnues dans toutes les epoques 
par les hommes les plus sages et les meilleurs, mais tous 
les projets proposes pour j porter remede ont echou^. 

L'effort le plus important qui ait jamais ete fait pour 
substituer I'arbitrage a la guerre est celui de la recente 
Conference de la Paix a La Haye. Mais tandis qu'elle a 
mis puissamment en evidence le sentiment toujours crois- 
sant d'humanit^, et que c'etait d^ja quelque cbose de voir 
la Paix recevoir un bommage eclatant de la part de nations 
armies jusqu'aux dents, le mauvais systeme a prouve 
combien il est coercitif : car le monarque qui a propose le 
ddsarmement ne pent lui-m^me pas d^sarmer, et la Guerre, 
apr^s avoir rendu bommage a la Paix, s'avance et pousse 
son char a travers toutes les defenses de La Haye et 
remplit de nouveau le monde de massacres. 

Les membres de cette Conference, en leur qualite de 
repr^sentants officiels de puissances jalousement armees les 
unes contre les autres, ont si^ge les mains liees. Car pour 
chacun d'eux la puissance de son propre pays etait I'int^r^t 
supreme, et les inter^ts de la Paix ne venaient qu'apr^s. 
La Paix etait forc^e de payer sa glorification en conce- 
dant la Idgitimit^ de la Guerre comme methode civilis^e. 

Selon les conventions de La Haye, I'arbitrage etant 



334 ADDRESS TO A PEACE CONGRESS 

purement facultatif, nous ne sommes done gu^re plus 
advances qu'auparavant : TArbitrage continuera quand 
rintdr^t ^goi'ste le sugg^rera, et la Guerre aussi. 

On a ddifi^ bien des esperances sur I'accord oii Ton est 
arriv^, que les efforts d'une nation pour en amener une 
autre a accepter I'arbitrage ou pour r^tablir la Paix ne 
seraient consid^res par aucun des deux adversaires comma 
une intervention hostile. Mais cette precaution n'apparait 
que bien illusoire. 

Chaque gouvernement a ses propres difficult^s avec 
lesquelles il est aux prises, ses propres projets qui attend- 
ant une occasion favorable, et il y a comme un instinct 
gouvernemental qui s'oppose a creer un precedent d'inter- 
vention qui pourrait quelque jour se retourner avec usure 
contre son auteur. 

Helas ! tr^s peu de nations ont une situation morale qui 
leur donne le droit d'influencer les autres ! Comme a toute 
offre desagr^able de " bons offices '* on pent r^pondre par 
un tu quoque^ ce qui serait certainement la rdponse d'une 
nation sure de la victoire ; on ne pent en aucune f a9on 
compter sur une pareille influence. Ce que nous sommes 
plus vraisemblablement appel^s a voir, c'est le d^veloppe- 
ment de la vieille methode qui consiste a profiter courtoise- 
ment des difficultes d'un voisin pour en tirer quelque 
avantage, pour etre r^mun^re en appui moral. 

II est surabondamment prouv^ que ce syst^me vicieux 
ne pent pas se reformer lui-meme et que, quelles que soient 
les bonnes dispositions des hommes qui tirent leur pouvoir 
de ce syst^me, ce pouvoir leur servira f orc^ment a defendre 
le systeme, et que, plus vertueux sera I'homme, plus puis- 
sante sera sa force d'action pour le mal. Ses vertus dore- 
ront ses chaines et les notres. La consequence de ce qui 
prdc^de est que, pour les amis de la paix, ce ne serait pas 



ADDRESS TO A PEACE CONGRESS 335 

seulement un gaspillage de forces que de recherclier pour 
leur cause I'appui des gouvernements, ce serait aussi intro- 
duire un element de f aiblesse. Car tout gouvernement qui 
fait des propositions de paix s'expose a ^tre soup9onn^ 
d'arriere-pens^es et de vues interessees. Quelle que soit 
leur valeur au point de vue des affaires intdrieures, les 
gouvernements, toutes les fois qu'il s'agit de^ la cause de 
la paix Internationale, fortifient necessairement Fun sur 
I'autre, tout simplement, cette esp^ce de solidarite, qui est 
celle de Fattacliement a des inter^ts particuliers mutuelle- 
ment respectes. C'est le devoir de la civilisation d'en finir 
avec un pareil etat de choses, de fa^on a ce que les ^1^- 
ments d'impartialit^ repr^sent^s dans I'etat de separation 
des nations puissent cooperer librement en vue d'une 
justice solidaire. 

Si nous consid^rons maintenant que les armements et la 
faculty de massacrer ne peuvent etre remplac^s que par 
des forces d' Evolution, ces forces ne peuvent pas etre 
laiss^es a la selection naturelle, le fort devorant le faible; 
c'est a la selection humaine qu'il faut faire appel pour 
mettre en ecbec ce cannibalisme international ; et comma 
tons les appels aux sentiments moraux, a la religion, a 
I'humanite, n'ont eu d'autre rdsultat que de rendre la 
guerre attentive a etre, toujours et avec une remarquable 
souplesse, morale, religieuse, humanitaire, et a conclure 
ainsi comme un nouveau bail, il semble absolument n^ces- 
saire d'essayer d'une nouvelle methode. 

La seule methode qui n'a pas encore etd mise a I'epreuve 
est celle qui consiste a s'en rapporter au sens moral et a la 
justice du genre humain tout entier, represente par des 
hommes comp^tents de toutes les nations, mais sans aucun 
lien avec les gouvernements, afin qu'ils s'opposent, des le 
debut, a toute dispute particuliere qui menace la paix et 



336 ADDRESS TO A PEACE CONGRESS 

que, par un jugement bas^ sur la raison, ils proclament la 
solution conforme a Thonneur de chaque pays int^ress^ 
dans la question. 

Ce que nous proposons, c'est done de concentrer toutes 
les forces humaines, sup^rieures, et elles seules, pour 
vaincre les forces brutales et inorganiques. Quelque ap- 
parence d'utopie que puisse avoir ce projet d'affronter 
I'orgueil et la passion de puissants empires avec des juge- 
ments que n'appuiera aucune force matdrielle, c'est prd- 
cisement la le seul recours qui reste. Quand meme nous 
pourrions f aire executer par la force un d^cret de Paix, ce 
serait par le fait meme donner une sanction a la Force et 
mettre les adversaires de la Paix a m^me de continuer leurs 
f aciles victoires sur la raison et sur le droit. Mais comment 
une nation peut-elle combattre cette force sans armes, cette 
force purement spirituelle, qui dit : " Oui, vous avez la 
puissance, vous pouvez faire ce qui vous plait ; notre force 
se borne a vous prouver que vous avez tort : la justice est 
contre vous, la loi est contre vous, la raison est contre 
vous ; voila les faits, ils ont ^te ^prouves, peses par les 
bommes les plus sages, par les plus grands juristes, non pas 
de nations qui soient vos ennemies, mais de toutes les 
nations : c'est le consensus des bommes competents ; vous 
^tes assez forts pour n'en tenir aucun compte ; vous pouvez 
entrer dans la voie du meurtre, mais non pas sans marquer 
votre nation de la honte du crime et du deshonneur." 

Un tel appel a la simple vdrit^ et a la justice ne pour- 
rait pas retenir les gouvernements ambitieux et les mili- 
taristes, mais il ne saurait manquer de renforcer le parti 
de la paix dans tous les pays oii le peuple est pouss^ a la 
guerre par des declarations oii on lui dit que son bonneur 
est en jeu — car c'est la d'ordinaire le pretexte qui fait le 
plus d'effet. 



INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION 337 

Ce serait pour les amis de la paix un argument bien 
puissant, si on les mettait a m^me de placer sous les yeux 
des masses trompees un jugement representant la sagesse 
et la justice de toutes les nations, jugement qui ferait voir 
la victoire r^elle de I'honneur et qui prouverait qu'on n'y 
pent pas parvenir par le massacre des hommes. 

Cette methode pent, sans doute, ne pas r^ussir dans 
tons les cas. On pent rencontrer des obstacles qu'il ne soit 
pas possible de surmonter ou de tourner par nos moyens 
pacifiques, surtout en leur ^tat primitif et imparf ait. Mais 
nous pouvons faire de notre mieux. Nous pouvons mettre 
a I'oeuvre nos meilleurs "ing^nieurs" pour ouvrir un 
solide chemin a la paix sur toute la surface du globe. Si 
notre projet pouvait arriver a emp^cher une guerre — rien 
qu'une — cela compenserait et au dela tons les efforts faits 
pour le faire accepter. Mais s'il pouvait emp^cher une 
guerre, il pourrait en emp^cber une autre, et puis encore 
une autre ; et nous pouvons esperer que final ement les 
peuples de tons les pays, ayant trouv^ la meilleure voie a 
suivre, en viendront a regarder leurs immenses et si cou- 
teux armements comme des arbres epuises et ne portant 
plus de fruits; et on demandera pourquoi ces arbres 
embarrasseraient plus longtemps la terre. 

THE INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION 
ALLIANCE 

It is proposed to form an International Alliance on the 
following principles : — 

1. In no case whatever can a point of honour between 
nations be honourably settled, nor a question of justice 
be justly settled, by proving the superiority of one over 
the other in the power to slay. 



338 INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION 

2. It IS inadmissible for a nation to be the sole judge 
of its own honour, or of the justice of its own case, in 
any dispute with another nation. 

3. The interests of all nations, both material and moral, 
being affected by every disturbance of peace between two 
of their number, Humanity itself is necessarily a party 
to every dispute that endangers peace, and should be re- 
presented in each such case by a tribunal competent to 
investigate the same, to discover the right and the wrong, 
and to affirm the adjustment required by justice and hon- 
our. 

I. It shall be the duty of this Alliance to watch vigi- 
lantly all sources of difference or of irritation between na- 
tions, to study all the facts and collect information, such 
as might be useful to a tribunal of arbitration should the 
issue become serious. 

II. Members of Associations now existing for the pro- 
motion of peace, and of such as may be formed, shall 
be admitted as members of the Alliance, and they shall 
unitedly proceed to elect, in their own country, a Council 
of (? five). 

III. Members of a Council need not belong to any 
other organization. They shall be persons holding no 
office — administrative, political, military, diplomatic — 
under their own or any other government, such as might 
render them liable to act under governmental pressure. 

lY. Members of Council shall receive no payment. 
"When summoned together and while sitting in Council 
their personal expenses and pecuniary losses shall be 
reimbursed by their electors. 

V. There shall be no president in any Council. Should 
a chairman be found desirable during any consultation, he 
shall be chosen by lot at the opening of each seance. 



INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION 339 

VI. The consultations of every Council shall be in se- 
cret, and its judgment unsigned, but every judgment shall 
set forth fully the facts, authentications, and arguments 
on which it is based. 

VII. Members unable to attend their Council may 
send written opinions and arguments, but there shall be 
no voting by proxy. 

VIII. Any Society of the Alliance that may believe 
peace imperilled should at once communicate with the 
Societies in other countries, and if two Societies agree that 
the occasion requires action the Councils shall all be sum- 
moned. 

The Councils shall assemble on the demand of a Coun- 
cil in any nation immediately involved by the dispute 
requiring adjustment. 

Any Council may assemble propria motu to consider 
the necessity of action in a particular case, and may cor- 
respond with Councillors elsewhere, and an agreement of 
two Councils shall cause all to assemble. 

IX. The Council of any country that is a party to the 
menacing dispute shall assemble at an early stage of the 
quarrel and collect all the facts relating to it, and state 
its views, and copies of such facts and statement shall be 
forwarded to each of the other Councils, to be used as 
documents in reaching their opinion. But the action of 
Councils belonging to the disputing nations shall be lim- 
ited to this. 

X. If the tribunal constituted by the Hague conven- 
tions fails in any instance to bring about arbitration, or shall 
so delay it as to endanger peace, a General Council shall 
assemble and adjudicate the dispute ; nor shall it decline 
this obligation even though one or both of the disputants 
should not be signatories to the Hague conventions. 



340 INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION 

XI. The Councils in their several countries shall, in 
such case, confide their respective conclusions and state- 
ments, each Council to two of its members ; these shall 
meet with similar representatives from the other Councils 
(from nations not parties to the dispute) in some impartial 
place, and shall together constitute the General Council, 
or tribunal of arbitration. 

XII. The General Council shall not meet as mere 
delegates, fettered by the letter of the conclusions of their 
Councils. They are to compare these several statements, 
to consider freely any modifications that may be suggested, 
and to weigh any new fact that may have come to light 
since the statements were prepared. Their digest of all 
the statements and opinions shall be embodied in a full 
and final statement and judgment which shall at once be 
published. 

XIII. Whenever two Councils belonging respectively 
to the disputing countries, or three Councils of other 
countries, or three Societies of the League, shall agree 
that action is too urgent for the normal procedure, as many 
members of the various Councils as can gather in one 
place shall constitute the General Council and pass final 
judgment as such. 



ADDRESS ON 
SUNDAY OPENING OF EXHIBITIONS 



ADDRESS DN SUNDAY OPENING OF 
EXHIBITIONS ' 

GENTLEMEN, — I have no connection myself with 
any association whatever. I am not a member of any 
society or association at all. I have for a great many years 
— thirty or forty years — rather made it a specialty to study 
and to write on the subject of the Sabbath day and its 
various uses and character, and it was on account of my 
interest in the subject, without being employed and with- 
out payment of any kind, that I left my work and came 
up here for the purpose of trying to do what I consider my 
duty, and try to be of some little service. I have got beyond 
the point in life of having any ambition to be reported, and 
I hope these gentlemen will consider that I am simply in- 
terested in the subject itself. I regard the scheme of the 
Pan-American Exposition as a very magnificent one, the 
finest that I have known almost in my life, as regards this 
my native land. It gives a great many people a chance to 
know something about the New World, who have never 
been able to travel. Very few of us can wander about 
through this country and its various regions, and here we 
will have opportunity of finding out something about it. 
I think yours is a beautiful scheme; I also think that, 
a great many people — some, indeed, of my own acquaint- 
ance in New York, some in Cincinnati, where I lived 



1 Just prior to the opening of the Buffalo Exposition in 1901 consider- 
ble controversy occurred as to its Sunday opening". Mr. Conway attended 
le public meeting called by the Directors to discuss the question, and gave 
lis address. 



S44 SUNDAY OPENING OF EXHIBITIONS 

many years and where I married — will be able to come, 
provided they can spend their Saturday and Sunday here 
and see the Exposition ; otherwise not. That is my impres- 
sion, and particularly that it will be the case with a large 
number of artisans. 

It is a mistake to suppose this movement in favour of 
Sunday opening associated solely with Freethinkers and 
objectors to Christianity. Nothing of the kind. There has 
been all through Protestant history division of opinion on 
the subject of the obligation of Sunday. Calvin was a vehe- 
ment opponent of the obligation of Sunday, and so were 
Erasmus and Martin Luther. Luther was so opposed to it 
that he advised his people that if anybody attempted to 
impose the Sunday upon them as an obligation, they ought 
to dance on it and play on it, and in every way assert their 
Christian freedom. In the seventeenth century we find 
those very great men — among the greatest that ever taught 
— Archbishop Tillotson and Bishop Jeremy Taylor (whom 
Emerson described as "the Shakespeare of divines"), and 
other divines holding these liberal ideas about Sunday. 

I was just now speaking to your president of the long 
struggle we had in London to open for the people on Sunday 
the art galleries, the British Museum, and other attractions 
long closed. Out of thirty parishes of the English church 
in London, we had the clergymen of twenty-seven advocat- 
ing the freer Sunday, — divines of all views, from broad 
churchmen like Dean Stanley to Mr. Horsford and other 
high churchmen, who stood by the side of Huxley, Tyndall, 
Sir Charles Lyell, and other great scientific men,who spoke 
for what they considered the great cause of the people, — 
liberty to see works of art and to study the treasures of the 
British Museum on Sunday. The movement succeeded; 
and although it was opposed by a certain number of dis- 



SUNDAY OPENING OF EXHIBITIONS 345 

senting preachers at the time, which was many years ago, 
there has never come from any quarter or any church a pro- 
posal to return to the old system ; not one person now wishes 
to close any institution that was then opened. 

The same may be said of the effort in which I and my 
family joined in New York, — the opening of the Metropoli- 
tan Museum of Art and Museum of Natural History, — 
which also succeeded. It was opposed very vigorously by 
men who were orthodox Christians, but they were convinced 
by the arguments in favour of opening, the result being that 
these places in New York were opened ; all the fears of bad 
result proved to be mistaken, and now no one thinks of 
closing any of those places. 

At one of the meetings in London advocating the open- 
ing of the British Museum and the National Art Galleries, 
Dean Stanley presided, and I remember his most impressive 
speech. Those present were nearly all men of some emi- 
nence, — public teachers, something like thirty or forty cler- 
gymen of the national church, several ministers of dissent- 
ing churches, several Roman Catholics, and forty or fifty 
men of science. He said : " Gentlemen, we have here, by a 
series of historic eventualities, one day free from toil for 
this people. It depends entirely upon us what shall be done 
with it. It is our business, and let us day and night con- 
sider what best we can do entirely for the benefit, welfare, 
and culture of mankind." That exhortation from the great- 
est dean, I suppose, in the recent history of the English 
church made a great impression on all present. 

In this country, gentlemen, the only religion constitu- 
tionally established is religious liberty. We know why it 
happened. Chief Justice Story has told us in one of his 
decisions that it was largely due to the history and evils of 
bringing civil power and force to back religion in the Old 



346 SUNDAY OPENING OF EXHIBITIONS 

World that our fathers severed themselves from such op- 
pression. 

Chief Justice Jay, one of the most orthodox and religious 
Episcopalians who ever lived in this State, in 1777, when 
as chief justice of New York he was charging the grand 
jury of Ulster County, gave a most impressive declaration 
with reference to the new Constitution. The Constitution 
was established on the 20th of April, and Chief Justice Jay 
gave his celebrated charge on the 9th of September ; and in 
it he said that it was the conviction of this country that 
Christianity did not depend, that religion did not depend, 
upon an arm of flesh ; that which was good and divine would 
not be lost, but could not be buoyed up by force; and he 
hoped the day would come when this idea of establishing 
any kind of religious institutions by force would pass away 
from the earth altogether. 

James Madison (afterwards President), a graduate of 
Princeton, a vestryman, a particularly religious man, the 
nephew of Bishop Madison, prepared for the Virginia Bill 
of Rights, in 1776, this article : " That religion or the 
duty we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharg- 
ing it being under the direction of reason and religion only, 
not of violence or compulsion, all men are equally entitled 
to the full and free exercise of it, according to the dictates 
of conscience ; and therefore that no men or class of men 
ought, on account of religion, to be invested with peculiar 
emoluments or privileges, nor subjected to any penalties 
or disabilities, unless, under cover of religion, the preser- 
vation of equal liberty and the existence of the state be 
manifestly endangered." 

These principles wrought their way until there was a 
union of all men in the foundation of our Constitution, and 
I need not remind you, gentlemen, of the great care taken 



SUNDAY OPENING OF EXHIBITIONS 347 

in the United States Constitution to secure religious free- 
dom, and that nobody should oppress any one on account 
of a religious institution of any kind. And President Wash- 
ington, the first time that he ever came in treaty with a 
non-Christian people (Tripoli), sent to the Senate (1776) a 
treaty which opened with the following : " As the Govern- 
ment of the United States of America is not in any sense 
founded on the Christian religion, as it has in itself no char- 
acter of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity 
of Mussulmans, and as the said States have never entered 
into any act of war or hostility against any Mohammedan 
nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising 
from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption 
of the harmony existing between the two countries." 

There is the statement, "As the Government of the 
United States of America is not in any sense founded on 
the Christian religion," from the great Washington. (It 
was unanimously ratified by the Senate.) 

We also know what the feeling of Franklin was on the 
subject. But since that period we have suffered a great 
many changes, and there have been efforts to rebel against 
this perfect religious freedom that was bequeathed to 
us by our fathers. We know that President Washington, 
when travelling on an important tour, every hour being 
of importance, was delayed in a small Connecticut village 
and kept there a whole day, because, as he writes in his 
journal, it was " contrary to the law and disagreeable to 
the people of this state to travel on the Sabbath day." A 
meeting-house being near, he heard what he calls " a very 
lame sermon," and he had to stay in a very poor inn. No 
traveller would be delayed over Sunday now, in Connect- 
icut or anywhere else. We have lived that far. Those who 
insisted upon the old Sabbath were just as sure then, as 



348 SUNDAY OPENING OF EXHIBITIONS 

absolutely certain, that they were infallible on the subject, 
as anybody can be about the present Sunday. But it may 
be that a hundred years from now people will be surprised 
that there ever could have been a question, in a great city 
like this, as to whether an exhibition should be opened 
on Sunday. They may look back upon it just as we look 
upon the absurdity of poor Washington being imprisoned 
for a day in a tiny village and poor inn in Connecticut, 
because of the Sabbath. 

Franklin says ; " When religion is good, I conceive that 
it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, 
and God does not care to support it, so that its professors 
are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, it is a 
sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one." 

Well, these are testimonies from which was derived our 
feeling that the principle of religious freedom must be pre- 
served; and this means substantially that those of the 
community who believe they ought to have perfect liberty 
for study, for art, for everything that is lawful, for every- 
thing that does not violate morals, should be allowed access 
to the means of culture on Sunday, and that it is cruel 
and wrong that they should be excluded from them. That 
is the general principle. Now, we know what the Sabbath is 
and has been. We know how it was treated by the old blue 
laws and other laws that made it a curse, so that children 
especially rejoiced when it was over. We believed that 
by adopting a more liberal and happy Sunday we should 
make it more precious to all in the community, not only 
to the orthodox or to the people who go to church, but 
to those who do not ; because the more beautiful and the 
more attractive you make the day the more determined will 
be the people everywhere to preserve, to uplift, take care 
of it, and see that it is not injured. 



SUNDAY OPENING OF EXHIBITIONS 349 

Now, it is impossible, under the new conditions that have 
come about, — the railways, the enormous id crease of our 
country to a great nation of 76,000,000, with vast cities 
in it, — that happiness, comfort, or even health, whether 
of mind or body, can be secured unless there is on Sunday 
some small percentage of labour. There is such labour, as 
we know, on every train, every trolley, in every home, and 
in the churches ; some few must work in order that the 
many may be benefited. That is a rule. But in the case 
of an exhibition, where an exceptionally large number of 
people must be employed, there always arises this question 
of such a number having to work more, perhaps, than we 
would like. Now, I have attended a good many exhibitions. 
I spent some months at that in Paris in 1867, then in 1889, 
and also in that of last year, and with regard to their 
Sunday work I observed the smallness of the labour — 
everything went by itself ; the machines went by them- 
selves ; very little labour was required of attendants. On 
the other hand, many attendants were from far-off coun- 
tries ; there were Swedish, Norwegian, Swiss, Eussian, and 
other attendants, many of them women exhibiting fabrics 
and jewels and wares in large, fine rooms ; and these were 
their only reception rooms. If they had not these rooms 
on Sunday, if these had been closed to them, they would 
have been out somewhere after sleeping in some closet, 
perhaps, trying to pull through Sunday, but they would 
have been thrown out on the streets, these young women. 
In the exhibition were their parlours, their homes. It will 
be much the same with the numbers that come here from 
South America and other distant regions to show off the 
products of those regions ; and it will be very unfortunate, 
indeed, if these attendants lose on any day the advantage 
of being surrounded by the things they have come here to 



350 SUNDAY OPENING OF EXHIBITIONS 

enjoy, making this sojourn the great era of their lives, the 
most beautiful period of their lives, and are every Sunday 
tossed about in the streets of a city of which they know 
little, whose language they may little understand, and per- 
haps be victimized. 

The practical case is, of course, of tremendous impor- 
tance. It is of the first importance, I will say almost of 
supreme importance, that the Exhibition should pay well ; 
that it should not have a deficit ; that it should be a great 
success. It may be urged that by opening on Sunday the 
sentiment of a number of people in the country will be 
alienated from it. I believe this would not be the case. I 
have been in New York watching with eagerness each 
mention of the Exhibition in newspapers, or by my brother 
authors and friends in clubs, also reading reports of ser- 
mons ; and, so far as I could learn, there has been no 
agitation about this question at all. I was prepared to 
write to the papers if there had been anything of the kind, 
but I have not been able to find that Sunday closing excited 
any public ripple at all. I am told it has been done in 
private, but certainly no public agitation has been raised 
in New York that would indicate that among the people 
generally there could possibly be any alienation of feeling. 
It has there not been a public question. Yesterday after- 
noon I met Dr. Kobert CoUyer at the Century Club and 
told him where I was going, and he said to me : "I fear 
you are too soon. Twenty years later all the preachers 
would be in favour of opening, if there were another ex- 
hibition ; but the most you are likely to get now will be 
some kind of compromise." That was a venerable minister's 
opinion. Well, I hope, at any rate, that the compromise will 
not be serious, and, above all, that the beauty, the attract- 
iveness of the Exhibition will not be compromised away. 



SUNDAY OPENING OF EXHIBITIONS 351 

At least half of the people who come to this exhibition 
will be persons not of sufficient maturity to appreciate 
thoroughly the machinery or study objects for culture. 
They ought to get some learning from it ; but many will 
come to it as a sort of picnic, and they should be considered 
by you. There is not the slightest religion or advantage in 
people being long-faced or unhappy, nor any evil in their 
being merry as long as they are innocently so, and all the 
pleasure and amusement the exhibition can give inside of 
the law it should give them. Otherwise the exhibition may 
foster immorality outside. I should like to know, as a mat- 
ter of interest, how many votes could be got for Sunday 
opening among the saloon keepers and dives of Buffalo, 
How many would be glad to have that rival to their traffic 
on Sunday ; and I could wish for nothing more than for a 
suffrage to be taken among the scholars, among the pro- 
fessors and teachers in colleges and schools, among the 
physicians, among the lawyers ; among all who are not rev- 
erend, for, excellent as the reverend gentlemen may be, 
it is admitted all over the world that bias is unconscious, 
and that they whose whole business depends on a particular 
use of Sunday would be judges sitting in their own case. 
The most impartial judge refuses to sit in any case in 
which he is personally interested. Therefore, opinions of 
that kind are professional ; and I say it, although among 
the dearest friends I have in the world are clergymen. I 
myself was a Methodist preacher, and have friends in that 
and other churches whom I respect and love, but I know 
that professional bias is strong in the clergy. I think that 
if the question of Sunday, of its obligations, of the freedom 
that is claimed by the intelligence and scholarship of the 
time, — if all this were submitted to disinterested men 
fairly, to men interested simply in the welfare of the com- 



352 SUNDAY OPENING OF EXHIBITIONS 

munity, tlie intellect and culture of the country would be 
found in favour of Sunday opening. 

The closing of the exhibition, when Buffalo has twice its 
population here on Sunday, will be the means of fostering 
disorder, immorality, and evil in the city. That is my the- 
ory. I have not been where that has occurred, but I have 
observed, in the Sunday exhibitions I have witnessed in 
Paris, Antwerp, and Brussels, perfect order and delight 
in the Sunday crowds. I have never heard of any complaint 
about evil results from any Sunday openings. 

I can only add, gentlemen, that if there is any point on 
which further statement should be desired I will answer, 
if able. I fear I may have disappointed those present by 
not being able to say more than what you have probably 
considered a hundred times in your responsible position, 
but I have no desire or ambition to say anything original 
whatever (probably nothing original can be said on the 
subject), but only to give you opinions that I hold, as I 
know, in common with many of my literary brothers and, 
as I believe, with many thoughtful people everywhere. 



DOGMA AND SCIENCE 



DOGMA AND SCIENCE * 

DOGMA means strictly an opinion, or an hypothesis. 
Every discovery of science begins as an hypothesis. 
But among the hypotheses of primitive science there was 
one — the theory of deities — of such vast import that it 
excited popular fears, gave rise to priesthoods, and|to an 
authority able to establish that hypothesis as in itself final. 
In science hypothesis is never an end but a means ; it can 
attain authenticity only by verification, and the verification 
is always open to question. Any theory established other- 
wise than by proof of its truth is an arrest of the scientific 
process. Such is dogma. 

The development of theory into dogma was very slow. 
Indeed, dogma would appear to be exclusively an institu- 
tion of Christianism. Although there existed in the pre- 
Christian world a general belief in gods, that belief was 
expressed in poetry and philosophy ; there was no formula 
or creed, no doctrine legally authoritative. In the Vedas, in 
the Hebrew psalms, along with hymns to the gods there are 
expressions of atheism. "Who can tell us whether there 
are any gods at all?" says a verse of the Vedas. " Why do 
you sleep, Jahv^ ? Wake up ! " says a psalm. In the Book 
of Proverbs Agur ridicules, with the wit of Voltaire, but 
with more than his scepticism, the omniscient people who 
have discovered a Holy One who holds the winds in his fists. 
" I 'm a stupid animal," he says : " I know nothing of any 

1 In 1904 a Congress of Freethinkers from all the world was held at 
Home. Mr. Conway attended as representing the United States, and de- 
livered this address, translated into French. 



356 DOGMA AND SCIENCE 

Holy One. What is his name, and what is his son's name? " 
All the books ascribed to Solomon are pervaded by biting 
scepticism; so is Job. But we do not discover that the an- 
cient freethinkers were punished for their denials. Buddha 
did not suffer, nor Confucius. There were struggles be- 
tween rival gods as tribal banners, totem against totem, 
superstition against superstition, but punishment for reli- 
gious or ethical opinion seems to have been unknown. Ad- 
mirers of Socrates make him a martyr to philosophy, but 
he certainly was not ; his hatred of the Democracy brought 
him into compromising relations with its practical enemies. 
And even so late as the time of Jesus freethought was 
unobstructed. If Jesus suffered violence it was certainly 
not for his teachings, but because he led a sort of mob to 
prevent animal sacrifices in the temple. 

It is the darling delusion of mankind that the world is 
progressive in religion, toleration, freedom, as it is pro- 
gressive in machinery. But in some things the world has de- 
teriorated. There is now a wider diffusion of what is called 
education, but in religion and ethics it is largely educated 
ignorance. People may outgrow natural ignorance, but 
ignorance carefully cultured, polished, propagated, and 
called divine truth can rarely be outgrown, because it para- 
lyzes the power of growth. Natural ignorance is as the 
young tree absorbing the rain and sunshine, and growing ; 
educated ignorance is as the iron-bound cask, which may be 
pumped full of purest water or finest wine, but derives 
nothing from them, and remains the same dead wooden cask 
till it rots. The difficulty of outgrowing the long breeding 
in Christianism is exemplified even by the survivals in 
many freethinkers of the spirit of ancient faith after its 
letter is lost. Whence comes our belief in progress ? It is 
said, Time is on our side, and the future is inevitably ours. 



DOGMA AND SCIENCE 357 

Is that a relic of the millennium ? Time devours impar- 
tially the beautiful and the deformed, the good and the evil. 
It destroys the Parthenon of wisdom and the Colosseum of 
cruel combat. In reading Lucian we find him at once ridi- 
culing the dilapidated gods of Greece, and affrighted by the 
more repulsive shapes of the new superstition advancing 
to take their place. That new superstition, Christianism, 
crushed the heart and brain of Greece, and to-day the land 
of ancient intellectual giants is occupied by a race of intel- 
lectual dwarfs. 

The freethinker in America to-day stands in a position 
corresponding to that of Lucian and Celsus in the early days 
of Christianism. The United States was founded by great 
freethinkers. Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Adams, 
and other statesmen took care to frame a constitution 
excluding religion from any part in the government. To- 
day the nation is enforcing a hard and cruel Sabbath ; we 
are taxed to support a corps of chaplains in army, navy, and 
Congress ; and the vast properties of churches being ex- 
empt from taxation, we are all taxed to support the dogmas 
whether we believe in them or not. We are all supporting 
propagation by the sword of dogmas in the realms of Con- 
fucius and of Mohammed. Our gallant secularists have to 
struggle hard to prevent a dogma from being incorporated 
in the United States Constitution. A large and growing 
party insists on overthrowing the freedom founded by our 
fathers. And we know well that if that dogma of God is 
inserted in the Constitution it will be no idle word, but the 
inauguration of a relentless persecution in behalf of a 
composite traditionary image of a vulgar majority. Free- 
thinking journals will be suppressed ; assemblies and lec- 
turers will be suppressed ; science will be intimidated under 
a suspended sword; every official in the nation will be 



S58 DOGMA AND SCIENCE 

required to declare under oath his belief in the coUectivist 
God. 

And all that growing superstition labels itself science. 
To our nation of eighty millions a child is born, unto us 
is given a prophetess, who has proclaimed a new religion, 
— Christian Science. Judea had its Solomon, China had 
its Confucius, Persia its Zoroaster, India its Buddha, but 
America has its Mrs. Eddy. Her spiritualistic infatuation 
makes more converts in a year than Freethought makes 
in a decade. The Christian Scientists have built hard by 
Harvard University one of the grandest churches in 
America. Behold Progress ! 

Another dogma to which freethinkers often lend them- 
selves is that Truth crushed to earth will rise again. 
Truth has been crushed to earth thousands of times with- 
out rising again. Buddha denies the gods, and is made a 
god himself. Jesus drives the sacrificial animals from the 
temple, and is made a sacrifice himself. Not long ago I 
received a letter from the late Herbert Spencer, whom I 
long knew personally, in which he warns me against an 
error in which he himself had long been misled, namely, 
the error of believing that man is a rational being. Man 
is not a rational being, he declares, but a bundle of pas- 
sions, and his action depends on the passion that is up- 
permost at the time. But Herbert Spencer's error, I think, 
and that of most philosophers, is that of supposing that 
man is a truth -loving being. In personal affairs mankind 
likes veracity, but in religion the world is diseased, and 
demands the artificial temperature of illusion. The clear 
bracing air of truth, sustaining to science, is brutal to 
the poitrinaire heart, long nourished on illusions, and 
moving in a waking dream. 

Those of us who have been brought up under a rigid 



DOGMA AND SCIENCE 359 

regime of Protestant dogmas, gradually discovered their 
falsity, and now see them as odious, have to wonder why 
we so long clung to them tenaciously, defending every 
link in the chain that bound us. We fight off the truth as 
long as it is possible. No doubt this is largely because our 
social and domestic affections have climbed on those stony 
walls of dogma, covering them with flowers and fruits, 
and truth threatens to tear them away and cast them into 
the mud. 

When Voltaire in his conflict with the church creed 
was asked by a priest, " What will you put in its place?" 
he replied, " I remove from you a cancer and you ask 
what will I put in its place ! " But while Science and 
Freethought are compelled to struggle against the fictions 
and fallacies that afflict nations, they are animated by 
humanity, their aim is human happiness; that is their 
religion ; and their propaganda can never be that of the 
missionary who with his dogmas besieges all the world. 
Science can never win victories of that kind. As Tyndall 
once said to me, " We can only plant the tree of know- 
ledge beside the tree of superstition, and hope that its 
roots will be strong enough to draw away the sap and the 
superstitions wither." 

Freethought is a kind of applied science. Charles Dar- 
win, whom I used to know, regarded the damage done 
to dogmas by science as incidental and unintentional ; the 
scientific men by their method of exactness, by their de- 
mand for the most thorough evidence, were unconsciously 
criticising the vague and untrustworthy evidence on which 
Christianity rested. I have known personally the leading 
scientific men in England and America in my time, and 
though their writings and lectures undermined orthodox 
dogmas, they were tender and cautious in their relations 



360 DOGMA AND SCIENCE 

with individuals and their sentiments. In fact, it is neces- 
sary, in a world suffering from the malady of orthodoxy, 
that our private treatment shall be largely pathological. 
The wise physician will not tell the delicate patient the 
exact truth. The patient cannot bear it. It may cause 
fatal fear and emotion ; in the invalid imagination the 
literal truth may do all the work of falsehood. 

But these benevolent stratagems and deceptions, which 
seem essential to the fine art of living with others, are 
the small coralline builders of the stratum on which the 
dogmas are founded. If it is right for the compassionate 
physician to conceal the truth in order to save a life, were 
it not right for a priest to suppress the truth to save souls 
from eternal torments in hell ? Paul openly defended the 
privilege of pretence for the sake of the Gospel and for 
the glory of God. Indeed, most people regard as venial, 
if not right, stratagems for their own cause. When Gari- 
baldi and Mazzini occupied Naples, and the priesthood 
announced that the blood of St. Januarius would not 
liquefy as usual, the two radical leaders, both unbelievers, 
told the priests that unless the blood liquefied as usual 
the church of St. Januarius would be closed altogether. 
So the blood liquefied on time. And similarly St. Peter's 
was illuminated by the order of Mazzini when the Pope 
had forbidden an annual illumination. These facts were 
told me by Mazzini, who said that he and Garibaldi con- 
sidered it necessary that the people should not suppose 
that their f^tes would be suppressed by republican gov- 
ernment. 

But connivance with unveracity appears very different 
when it is for what we consider evil. During the Dreyfus 
struggle, a French officer, in his desire to save I'Etat- 
Major from disgrace, committed a forgery to prove Dreyfus 



DOGMA AND SCIENCE 361 

guilty. The forgery was detected and confessed, and the 
officer killed himself. The crime was patriotic, and the 
native town of that officer regarded him as a martyr to 
France worthy of a monument. The forgeries which have 
been committed to support I'Etat-Major of Heaven have 
piled up like the Alps, and it requires hard work and 
learning to tunnel through them. The necessity of trans- 
lating the Bible from dead languages has given free rein 
to perversion by mistranslation and interpolations. The 
European Bible opens with the words : " In the beginning 
God created the heaven and the earth." In these ten 
words there are three mistranslations of fundamental im- 
portance. The second word of the sentence, "the," is 
not in the original Hebrew ; there is no article at all, but 
simply " In beginning." The next word is not " God," but 
the plural " gods." The next word, " created," is rendered 
from a word meaning " separated." The sense of the ori- 
ginal is : " In beginning (their work) the gods separated 
heaven from earth." By importing into this opening sen- 
tence of the Bible the notion of the creation of the world 
out of nothing, and ascribing this to a single God instead 
of gods, the deity is brought before men as the author of 
all the evils and agonies that have come out of his creation. 
The mistranslations and the interpolations in the Bible 
are not trivial things ; men do not make counterfeits for 
centimes. In one chapter woman is said to have been made 
from the rib of Adam. The sense of the original is that 
woman was made from the female side of man. Nothing 
is said of a rib. Yet by that rib error woman has been 
degraded throughout the Christian era. In Mark xvi, 15, 
Jesus is represented as saying " Go ye into all the world 
and preach my gospel to every creature." This text is 
now known and admitted by all Christian scholars to be 



362 DOGMA AND SCIENCE 

spurious ; yet on that spurious text the whole missionary 
system is founded, foreign races are invaded by a gun- 
powder gospel and receive what the old crusader called 
" the curse of sweet Jesus." 

There are many thousands of ingenious forgeries in the 
Bible, all now admitted by theologians. Christendom cir- 
culates them by millions in one hundred and fifty different 
languages ; that is, it circulates throughout the world 
millions of admitted falsehoods. But if it is all for the 
glory of God, who cares for the falsehoods ? 

The supremacy of the Bishop of Rome over all other 
bishops rests upon a perversion of one sentence in a decree 
of the Council of Nice. The original manuscript is in the 
British Museum ; anybody may examine it. There is no 
superiority given by the Council to one bishop over another. 
As Renan said, at the bottom of every institution there is 
a fiction. 

One great difficulty of any direct propagation of free- 
thought is that half the world are in holy livery. If the 
churches and temples of the world were all closed, many 
millions of people would starve. The officers and sailors on 
American ships, ordered to threaten Turkey with a deluge 
of blood on account of the unpaid pecuniary claims of 
missionaries, — these American marines may be freethink- 
ers, they may despise missionaries, but each is in uniform, 
that is, in livery, and must if ordered murder any number 
of Moslems to get money for missionaries. The livery of 
politicians and legislators may not be so visible, but in 
truth the majority of people find it useful and comfortable 
to belong to parties and sects, and escape individual re- 
sponsibility. But the freethinker is that man who welcomes 
every teacher, but calls no man master. It is well that 
there should be congresses of this kind, because in no 



DOGMA AND SCIENCE 363 

country can there be any continuous organization for any 
particular type of freethought. 

The only bond which can unite freethinkers is the nega- 
tion they have in common. Every one of us here, repre- 
senting a group or groups, feels perfectly certain that the 
creeds and dogmas are untrue. It never even occurs to 
us to take a theological dogma seriously. Their growth, 
history, development, represent departments of ethno- 
logy and anthropology. We study them, explain them, but 
never answer them. When freethinkers step away from 
their common negation, and begin to affirm, they become 
distinct individualities. They accept the facts of science, 
but science can give them nothing final ; the seeming solid 
facts of to-day may be all floated by new facts discovered 
to-morrow. We cannot therefore compete with the organi- 
zations founded on dogma. Those are for people who have 
adjourned their lives to another world. The freethinker 
considers only the world he is in ; he has all the heaven 
there is, and aims to make the most of it. 

There is an old story of a knight who inherited a grand 
castle, but when he went to take possession of it found the 
best rooms closed. One room was walled up by the testa- 
tor's will because some one had been murdered in it, 
another because it was haunted, a third was filled with the 
dilapidated old furniture accumulated in the family for 
generations. The poor knight in his grand castle could 
only get a closet to sleep in. 

That castle is but a too faithful picture of the world we 
are in. While science is revealing its palatial grandeurs, 
and art its power to decorate them, millions of people 
never enter the great halls of reason and wisdom, know 
not the beauty that surrounds them, dwell in the dark 
closets of superstition and fear. It is easy for people who 



864 DOGMA AND SCIENCE 

never saw the world to believe that it is under a curse. 
And, indeed, Protestanism in America takes pains to make 
Jehovah's curse actual for one day every week. Because 
a murdered Lord rose out of his sepulchre one Sunday, 
our people must show their joy by going into his sepulchre 
and staying there twenty-four hours every week. This 
weekly entombment is enforced by law. The American 
Sabbath is at present the most grievous tyranny and op- 
pression in the whole world. There cannot be a grosser 
superstition than to suppose one portion of time holier 
than another, unless it be the superstition that gloom is 
holier than mirth. It is solemn weekly human sacrifice. 
And it was sad tidings, indeed, to hear lately of a royal 
decree in Spain restricting the freedom and amusements 
of the people on Sunday. And I am sorry also to observe 
that the Roman Catholic priesthood in America, in their 
competition with Protestant sects, are beginning to assist in 
the Sabbatarian oppression. The free Sunday was the best 
thing about them, their distinction, and they are throwing 
it away. 

Napoleon Bonaparte said, " The people do not care for 
liberty. Those who want liberty are a few peculiar persons. 
What the masses want is equality." And Bonaparte secured 
equality by turning the whole French nation into soldiers. 
What he said about the indifference of the masses to per- 
sonal liberty is sadly illustrated in America. Democracy 
loves the uniform and uniformity. The freethinkers, who 
know that it is through differentiation and variation that 
higher species are evolved, have as much as they can do 
to defend personal liberty, — free speech, moral freedom, 
emancipation from the Sabbath. We are a small minority 
of the eighty millions of our people, largely immigrants 
who have come here not to find liberty but to make money. 



DOGMA AND SCIENCE 365 

A large proportion of these immigrants in America are 
Catholics, and there has just been formed a Federation of 
Catholics. To freethinkers Catholicism is represented by 
its history, by the inquisition; and the growth of that 
church, now numbering fifteen millions, is watched jeal- 
ously. 

This jealousy is just now accentuated by the conflict 
between the French Kepublic and the Papacy. At a time 
when competent leadership is in apparent decadence in 
some foremost nations, France has preserved its high tra- 
ditions in literature, art, and science. It is not easy for 
Americans to discern how far the conflict represents the 
culture and genius of France, and how far it is a simply po- 
litical affair. In every revolution for national independ- 
ence many different parties combine against some common 
enemy, but when that enemy is overthrown all the parties 
to the combination reclaim their share of the result. The 
experience of the United States has proved that, though 
a church may be disestablished, dogma cannot be disestab- 
lished. The Church of England was disestablished, only 
to be followed by the practical establishment of all the 
churches. The vast English Church properties were in- 
herited by the same denomination ; but whereas while con- 
nected with the State its properties and endowments were 
under control of the State, after the separation it possessed 
this immense wealth without any secular or legal restraint. 
The Church gained more than its former advantages, and 
was freed from all of its responsibilities and obligations. 
Having resided thirty years in London, I am certain that 
there is more religious liberty in the English Church than 
in the same denomination in America, and generally more 
freedom of thought and speech in England than in Amer- 
ica. If the French Republic, after amputating the Concor- 



366 DOGMA AND SCIENCE 

dat, shall make a Concordat at home with Catholicism and 
with Protestantism, we may find reason to remember a bit 
of demonology mentioned in St. Matthew. It is said that 
when an unclean spirit is disestablished in a man he goes 
off and brings back with him seven other spirits uncleaner 
than himself, and they all enter in, and the last state of 
that man becometh worse than the first. 

And, after all, that is the real aim of Freethought, to di«- 
establish the popedom in the mind. So long as the unclean 
spirit of superstition possesses the mind, it matters not 
whether it is under Pope or President. Scientific investi- 
gators are not always freethinkers outside of their own 
specialty. There are two eminent men of science in England 
associated with Spiritism. Their minds always impressed 
me as good looms; they weave well all the threads supplied 
them, but are without power to discover or judge whether 
the threads they weave are sound or rotten. The freethinker 
has his metier just there. He can utilize and apply science 
for human liberation. And when I have listened to the 
marvellous eloquence of our great orator, Robert G. Inger- 
soll, I have indulged a dream that there might at some time 
be a training-school for public teachers of freedom, — free- 
dom of thought, speech, and morality. 

It was the belief of Friedrich Strauss, author of the 
"Leben Jesu," that all freedom must be preceded by eman- 
cipation from supernaturalism. It is precisely forty years 
since I visited Strauss at Heilbronn. I walked with him 
beside the Neckar, and the same evening wrote down as 
nearly as I could remember what he said about his great 
work. This memorandum, taken from my old note-book, 
shall close my address : — 

" Strauss said he felt oppressed at seeing nearly every 
nation in Europe chained by an allied despotism of prince 



DOGMA AND SCIENCE 367 

and priest. He studied long the nature of this oppression, 
and came to the conclusion that the chain was rather inward 
than outward, and without the inward thraldom the out- 
ward would soon rust away. The inward chain was super- 
stition, and the form in which it bound the people of Eu- 
rope was Christian supernaturalism. So long as men accept 
religious control not based on reason, they will accept polit- 
ical control not based on reason. The man who gives up the 
whole of his moral nature to an unquestioned authority 
suffers a paralysis of his mind, and all the changes of out- 
ward circumstances in the world cannot make him a free 
man. For this reason our European revolutions have been, 
even when successful, mere transfers from one tyranny to 
another. He believed, when writing the ' Leben Jesu,' that 
in striking at supernaturalism he was striking at the root 
of the whole tree of political and social degradation. Renan 
had done for France what he had thought to do for Ger- 
many. Renan had written a book which the common peo- 
ple read ; the influence of the ' Leben Jesu ' had been con- 
fined to scholars more than he liked, and he meant to put 
it into a more popular shape. Germany must be made to 
realize that the decay of Christianity means the growth of 
national life, and also of general humanity." 



PUBLIC SERVICE 



PUBLIC SEEVICE^ 

THE Halls to be dedicated to-day are both arcbitect- 
urally and historically picturesque. 

Old men sometimes have the fantasy that if they could 
only have been born old and gradually grown young 
and mated experience to youthful vigour, they could ren- 
der a better account of life. Now, some such reversal of 
the law of individual life seems to have occurred in the 
one hundred and twenty-two years of Dickinson College. 
The history has been completely told, by Dr. Himes, Dr. 
Crooks, Dr. J. A. Lippincott, Dr. O. B. Super, and Mr. 
George Leffingwell Reed ; and in the early years, where 
youth might be looked for, curious symptoms of decrepi- 
tude are found. Brilliant men like Nisbet and Thomas 
Cooper could only supply the crutches on which the col- 
lege limped to its fiftieth year, and closed its doors for two 
years. 

It reopened with a faculty of surpassing ability and 
learning ; but physically it did not grow much, and it was 
only when about a hundred years old that it began to make 
up for that lost youth, and branch out into new edifices 
and schools, and fulfil the hopes of its parents, John Dick- 
inson and Benjamin Rush. 

Twenty-one years ago the College combined maturity 

^ Dickinson College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, being in need of a build- 
ing for the preparatory department, Mr, Andrew Carnegie gave a large 
sum for that purpose, conditional on the building being designated " Con- 
way Hall," " in honour of Dr. Moncure D. Conway, a distinguished alumnus 
of the College, in recognition of his great services in the realms of letters, 
of reform, and of humanitarian effort." 



372 PUBLIC SERVICE 

and youth in opening its doors to women. That was under 
President McCauley. When McCauley graduated in his 
twenty-fifth year we all thought that shy gentleman with 
spectacles the mature conservative, and when he became 
president at fifty, probably few anticipated any innovation. 
But meanwhile McCauley had presided over a female 
academy in Virginia, where the teaching was no doubt re- 
ciprocal. He had learned that in culture there is neither 
male nor female. But there was n® surprise about it. The 
Dickinsonian Adam was not asleep when this woman was 
taken from his side to be set really at his side, as an equal 
in intellectual rights. On the contrary, the old College 
was particularly wide awake, and had been brought by its 
hundred years of experience to give effect to the views of 
its chief founder. 

Dr. Crooks said in his oration : " To Dr. Rush, of all 
the founders, belongs the honoured name of Father of 
Dickinson College." Now, among the collected essays of 
Dr. Benjamin Rush, the most remarkable, I think, is one 
on the education of American women. It was written dur- 
ing the infancy of our College, but is striking enough to 
be reprinted. He pointed out that the ideas and methods 
of female education in England were inadequate to Ameri- 
can conditions. Rush graduated at Edinburgh, and knew 
England well. He says the American woman must share 
in many studies that in England are limited to men, be- 
cause she must here be the teacher of children, must often 
be the steward of estates, and he goes on mentioning com- 
petencies for which his countrywomen must be educated, 
— competencies equally masculine and feminine. Dr. Rush 
could not, of course, propose coeducation to colleges with 
imported presidents and professors, but the evolution of 
those principles was inevitable, and on them is founded 



PUBLIC SERVICE 373 

Denny Hall, — trebly memorial of the honoured sisters 
who bequeathed it, of the advance of the College to its old 
Father's idea of female education, and to the enterprise of 
the president who, in one year, has raised it from its ashes. 

Our College arose as a product and ensign of peace and 
good-will to man. A hundred and forty years ago Carlisle 
was mainly a fortress against the aborigines, whose de- 
scendants have long found welcome and culture on the very 
site then set apart for the soldiers. The Pontiac war and 
the Revolution having passed away, the fortress made way 
for the College. The first president was housed in the bar- 
racks. " Whereas," says the charter of 1783, " after a long 
and bloody contest with a great and powerful kingdom, it 
has pleased Almighty God to restore to the United States 
of America the blessings of a general peace, whereby the 
good people of this State, relieved from the burthens of 
war, are placed in a condition to attend to useful arts, 
sciences, and literature. 

"jBe it therefore enacted, That there be erected, and 
hereby is erected and established in the borough of Carlisle 
... a college for the education of youth in the learned and 
foreign languages, the useful arts, sciences, and literature." 

The dove of peace seems to have hovered over the Col- 
lege. In 1794 Washington, starting out to suppress the 
insurrection at Pittsburg, quartered some soldiers in the 
small building then used for teaching ; but the President's 
visit proved an excursion; whether or not because the 
rioters heard the soldiers were in our College, they at once 
became peaceful. In 1863 the Confederate army held 
Carlisle some days, but the College buildings and grounds 
were not harmed. The College was built on lands once be- 
longing to William Penn ; it bore the name of a grand 
old Quaker, John Dickinson; and we shall dedicate a hall 



374 PUBLIC SERVICE 

given by the man who is also building a palace of Peace at 
the Hague. 

Andrew Carnegie, in his " Life of Watt," tells us that 
the child ruminating on the kettle is not entirely fabulous. 
But the story is not so wonderful as the kettle we all have 
to ruminate on. The familiar kettle on wheels has turned 
into the Wonderful Lamp. Whenever the Scotch- Ameri- 
can Aladdin rubs it, out comes a library, or a college, or 
a palace of Peace, or pensions for retired professors. 

I remember hearing eloquent Lucretia Mott say that 
many rich people were scriptural so far as never letting 
their left hand know what their right hand doesn't do. 
Carnegie does not pose as a philanthropist. He insists that 
he is buying what he wants, and making shrewd bargains 
with Americans and others to secure the ends he desires. 
It is therefore good business for the right hand to have 
cooperation of the left. So far as fame is concerned, half 
of his gifts seem superfluous. My personal acquaintance 
with him is slight, but to me it appears that Carnegie is 
providing for his own household, which includes a large 
part of the human race, and gives in the spirit of Schiller's 
ode: — 

Be embraced, millions! 

This kiss to the whole world! 

When the first Baron Rothschild died in Paris, a vast 
crowd gathered at his funeral. A miserable tramp in 
patched clothes pressed through the crowd and stood at the 
door of the richest family in the world and filled the air 
with his lamentations, tears streaming. At last a police- 
man came and said, " Why are you making all this noise ? 
You are not a relation." — " No," said the ragged man, 
" I am not a relation. Therefore I weep." 

But for this later millionaire there is a relation in every 



PUBLIC SERVICE 375 

man, however hidden under ignorance, however degraded. 
While many use the phrase, " Brotherhood of Man," here 
is a man trying to render possible that fraternity among 
men born unequal by creating them, as the Declaration says, 
by creating them equal through culture, or equal enough 
to prevent Democracy from being a levelling downward 
instead of upward. 

In this opening century, when eyes grown old can see 
few shining Pisgahs of genius like those which glorified 
the last century, — senile dimness, you may say, — but in 
their place mountainous piles of gold, the hopeful sign is 
that these yellow peaks are shining with visions of pro- 
mised lands, and giving new significance to the dream of a 
Golden Age. There is an old Turkish proverb, that " as 
the purse becomes heavier the strings tighten." A Russian 
proverb says, " Where gold is there is a devil, where none 
is there are two." But the American proverb, when it 
comes, may be different. Dives is paying more attention 
to Lazarus, — some to his soul, some to his body, — and 
here is one who aspires to make all America an Abraham's 
bosom for both Dives and Lazarus. Not any sect or sec- 
tion, but the whole world, — so torn with strife, — is set 
in his heart, and his hymn is that of Robert Burns — 

Then let us pray that come it may, 

As come it will for a' that, 
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, 

May bear the gree, and a' that, 
For a' that and a' that. 

It 's coming yet for a' that — 
When man to man the world o'er. 

Shall brithers be for a' that. 

Dickinson College has been successively administered 
by Presbyterians and by Methodists, — by men attached 



376 PUBLIC SERVICE 

to their faith, but equally loyal to the charter, which pro- 
vides for entire religious freedom of trustees, professors, 
and students. And this has not been a formal but a loving 
loyalty. In the old Grammar School, out of which grew 
the Preparatory School, I was lodged for a time when I 
arrived here in 1847. In .that building went on the scien- 
tific teaching of Allen and Baird, and it was there I first 
came in contact with its headmaster, George R. Crooks, 

— a scholar, a thinker, whose soul was charity. Amid all 
vicissitudes I remain a sort of Crooksite to this day. Never 
shall I forget his discourse affirming his faith and his hope, 
and the exaltation of his conclusion : " Now abideth these 
three, — faith, hope, love ; and the greatest of these is 
love." In later life, when we were together in London, our 
talk was one day about John McClintock, and I may have 
mentioned a notion of my father, while a trustee of the 
College, that McClintock was too latitudinarian. " He was 
boundless in his charities," said Crooks, " but not sceptical 
in his theology." I have for many years realized that in 
enjoying the friendship of those two men to the end of 
their lives I was brought closer to the heart of John Wes- 
ley, who excluded none. Wesley hoped to sit down in the 
kingdom of heaven with men called heretics and heathen, 

— with Pelagius and Servetus, Socrates and Plato, — and 
(1745) wrote to his people : — 

" Lay so much stress on opinions that all your own, if 
it be possible, may agree with truth and reason ; but have 
a care of anger, dislike, or contempt towards those whose 
opinions differ from your own. You are daily accused of 
this (and, indeed, what is it whereof you are not accused ?); 
but beware of giving ground for such accusation. Condemn 
no man for not thinking as you think. Let every one enjoy 
the full and free liberty of thinking for himself. Let every 
man use his own judgment, since every man must give an 



PUBLIC SERVICE 377 

account of himself to God. Abhor every approach, in any- 
kind or degree, to the spirit of persecution. If you cannot 
reason or persuade a man into the truth, never attempt to 
force him into it. If love will not compel him to come in, 
leave him to God, the Judge of all. 

In that large spirit was conceived by Dickinson's great 
scholar, John McClintock, the grand and unique project 
of a Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesias- 
tical Literature, on which the most competent men of all 
creeds and churches should be employed, — orthodox 
and unorthodox, — and which now makes for every in- 
quirer his " McClintock and Strong" the monumental re- 
ligious cyclopaedia of its century. And with all that justice 
and fairness there is clearly visible the editor's theological 
point of view. 

The importance of conforming opinions to truth and 
reason, with which Wesley begins his plea for freedom of 
judgment, has become more urgent in these later days, when 
social interest is passing from creed to deed. For where 
religious enthusiasm ebbs away from speculative theories, 
for which martyrdoms were once suffered, it tends to beat 
with equal force on the coast of practical life and moral 
action. But action is liable to more serious dangers than 
abstract doctrines. When Charles Dickens first travelled 
in America he remarked that where, in starting a railway 
train, an English conductor cried, " All right ! " the Amer- 
ican conductor cried, " Go ahead ! " Beware of the blind- 
fold, " Go ahead ! " An individual may modify an error 
of opinion, or it may be merely academic ; but when he 
carries it into action he is usually victimized by it, — he 
is committed, and cannot always retreat. 

I have long observed, both in England and America, 
that where great public teachers and preachers have gone 



378 PUBLIC SERVICE 

silent, the assemblies that had surrounded them rarely seek 
new prophets, but tend to group themselves in various or- 
ganizations for practical ends. I suppose they feel that they 
have been long enough pumped into like buckets, — brim- 
ming, running over, — and need to absorb the stream like 
trees, and grow and bear their fruit. But poisons grow as 
well as good fruits, and the unscientific may fancy them 
good fruits. The Crusaders and the Inquisitors were con- 
scientious men, and thought they were saving mankind 
from eternal torments. " We launched on them," said one 
old Crusader, — "we launched on the Moslems the curse 
of sweet Jesus," and his church is now trying to wash out 
the stains of that blood. And how many stains are the 
foremost nations still bequeathing to posterity by the 
wrongs to which the ignorant rage of a few has carried 
them by unreasoning and precipitate action. 

Sidney Smith said, " In a country surrounded by dikes, 
a rat may flood a province." Some small base lust of power, 
or trade, or greed, to which the whole world seems a big 
cheese for its ratlike instinct, may deluge a nation with 
blood ; it has only to disguise itself in a flag, and mark itself 
with the cross, to identify its vermin purpose with the 
national honour and with the "gospel," should the victim 
resist. All the justice and conscience and brains of the 
country may see and detest the manoeuvre till then, but 
let one drop of blood be shed and a nation of peacemakers 
becomes a nation of manslayers. In the history of the world 
it has been repeatedly shown that one small brainless action 
may outweigh all the wisdom and justice of a country, and 
bring on evils that never end. 

Hence that dread doubleness of nations, each sending 
out sweet waters and bitter. Thirty-five years ago my 
duties as a journalist carried me to battlefields of France, 



PUBLIC SERVICE 379 

where men were mowed down like grass and villages burned 
and desolated. Some time after, like duties carried me to 
the town of Essen, in Germany, seat of the Krupp Works, 
the largest forge of arms in the world. There I saw two 
kinds of perfection. One was the town of the Krupp 
work-people. Socialistic reformers — Babeuf, Fourier, St. 
Simon, Robert Owen — have for more than a century been 
trying in vain to build ideal communities, and such have 
been successfully built only in romances. But where social 
enthusiasts have failed, the Krupp Gun Works have suc- 
ceeded. Exploring those beautiful habitations with happy 
wives and children, the library, reading-room, school, baths, 
church, gymnasium, playground, hospital, theatre, I walked 
through a veritable Utopia, — all the visionary romances 
become real. Then I saw the other perfection, — the ex- 
quisite evolution by which the iron ore passed from furnace 
to furnace, forge to forge, — announcing to the scientific 
refiner by tints of flame, red, yellow, blue, when it was 
ready to advance another stage towards that purity of 
heart when it becomes Bessemer steel, and then attain total 
sanctification as a gun able to carry a shell for miles. They 
intrusted me to a scientific manager who knew English, 
and revealed certain things I was not to print, — secrets 
of state. He showed me a transcendent gun, — a beauty. 
This dainty creature was surrounded by artistic shells, as 
Venus might be by Cupids, each shell with a face or dial, 
on which a hand is turned to a figure. The shell flies, and 
at the exact second pointed to by the dial hand infal- 
libly explodes. When I saw the array of these perfect guns, 
with their families of shells nestling around them, and the 
workmen's pretty and well-dressed children playing around, 
the touching scene recalled the early western epitaph of 
" Jeames Hambrick, who was shot with a revolver, one of 



380 PUBLIC SERVICE 

tlie old-fashion kind, brass-mounted, and of such is the 
kingdom of Heaven." 

From a world in which humanity and inhumanity thus 
grow by reciprocity, and men gather grapes from grape- 
shot, happy homes from home-destroying guns, each indi- 
vidual derives a twofold nature, — in one seated reason 
and conscience, in the other communal loyalty. The word 
" loyalty " is a corruption of legality. Its supreme virtue, 
called " patriotism," often disguises a real faithlessness to 
one's country, as when the legality of slave-hunting de- 
manded of our loyalty, our patriotism, that we should assist 
bloodhounds pursuing men and women seeking liberty. 
And we Southerners were here denouncing as unpatriotic 
the greatest man we had ever seen, John McClintock, 
for asking justice for negroes I Real patriotism is an ex- 
tension of family feeling ; when a man loves his family so 
much as to rob other families for his own wife and chil- 
dren, or when he seeks his country's welfare by wrong- 
ing other countries, it is the human becoming brutal, tooth 
becoming fang. 

In a nation of eighty millions, more than half of them 
the debris of foreign lands, swollen by a weekly importa- 
tion of a population larger than that of Carlisle, the in- 
tegrating force cannot be any principles held in common ; 
it can only be a flag. Every man can see in the flag his 
own interests or his prejudices; and the American epi- 
demic is Flag on the brain, — Cerehro-huntingesis I The 
flag is deified as Old Glory, but there is something higher 
than glory, — Justice. Let the patriotic scholar translate 
aright the testimony of Jesus and Paul, and hold their 
ensign above all banners : — 

"Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for Jus- 
tice." 



PUBLIC SERVICE 381 

" Let every one that nameth the name o£ the Lord hold 
aloof from Injustice." 

As all colours are contained in light, all virtues are 
contained in justice, and all crimes are varieties of in- 
justice. 

We are about to dedicate a Preparatory School. But the 
whole College, and every college, is a preparatory school. 
Nay, our epoch is one of preparation. The famous figures 
of the last century have passed away, but there was a long 
preparation for each of them. How many obscure workers 
made their researches before the generalizer appeared, — 
the Humboldt, the Darwin ? This day there are amid the 
sepulchres of past greatness competent men and women 
teaching in quietness and obscurity the coming generation ; 
but our peril is that these guides may not realize that 
they are necessarily moulding the new generation in its 
spirit and character. There is no predestination that these 
shall be any better than their forerunners, or even as good. 
The influences tending to give American youth false aims 
and mean standards of life are increasingly potent. There 
is something like a social reversion to the military type of 
aristocracy, which in England is fossilized. The titles, 
Duke and Marquis, Knight and 'Squire, originally mili- 
tary, are such no longer. But here we have people trying 
to make themselves into a social caste, as sons and daugh- 
ters of the Revolution. From whom are they descended ? 
There were rude people in the Revolution, and even brutal, 
who tarred and feathered men who pleaded for peace, and 
drove two hundred thousand worthy gentlemen to leave 
their estates and seek refuge in Canada and elsewhere 
because, having taken oath as magistrates or officials to 
support the crown, they would not perjure themselves by 
destroying it. Many of these dames of the Revolution, if 



382 PUBLIC SERVICE 

they met their great-grandfathers, would not tolerate them 
in their houses. Nor would some colonial dames, — possi- 
bly descendants of the murderers of Quakers, witches, and 
Indians. The finest imaginative genius this country ever 
produced, Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose ancestors were 
judges and magistrates in colonial Massachusetts, was so 
ashamed of their cruel sentences that he discarded their 
name, Hathorn, and called himself Hawthorne. If any one 
discovers that he has a worthy ancestor, he is right in 
respecting him and cherishing his memory ; but it is not 
admissible to raise an army into a patrician class, however 
good its cause. There is no glory in strewing the earth 
with dead bodies, said the ancient Chinese sage, and vic- 
tors in war should mourn as at a funeral. A main argu- 
ment against enfranchising women is that they are not 
expert in the arts of destruction. Let them cherish that 
distinction, Daughters of Disfranchised Peace, Gentle- 
women of the Evolution, whose leaven, however hid in 
the coarse masculine lump, can lift it out of the vulgar 
notion that honour may depend on skill in butchery. 

Ah, that is the parable of all beautiful victories, — 
victories in which none are defeated, all triumphant. 
Milton warned us that all that is done by violence is but 
half-done. Our time is full of confirmations. When I think 
over the evolutionary movement for removing the burdens 
of woman, begun in my youth, and see the legal burdens 
piled away as relics of barbarism, — and see that every 
contemporary achievement of violence has left some evil 
sequel, — methinks I hear again that voice saying, "Ah 
yes, it was a woman, — unarmed, without bullet or ballot, 
— content with a hidden influence, no pomp or glory, who 
has wrought this one only stainless triumph of your time. 
This is the victory of the love that is lowly, seeking not 



PUBLIC SERVICE 383 

its own. Blessed are the lowly, for they shall inherit the 
earth." 

Sublime paradox, which young ambition may despise 
but gray experience knows true. The conquerors of the 
earth do not really possess the earth ; it possesses them. 
Gibbon smiles at Livy, who, he says, tries to persuade us 
that Rome conquered the world in self-defence. But such 
are the conditions. Whenever a nation makes a conquest, 
it must live up to it or down to it; must surround every 
subjugated country with a Monroe doctrine, ever ex- 
panding till it involves hostility to the whole world and 
loss of all that free-will which alone can really inherit 
the earth and enjoy it. Daniel Webster's rhetoric was 
splendid when in the Senate he spoke of Great Britain as 
" that Power whose morning drum-beat, travelling with 
the sun and keeping time with the stars, encircles the 
earth with one continuous strain of the martial airs of 
England." But what has it profited England to encircle 
the whole world and lose its real soul, its free-will, so that 
it has had to fight nearly every race — Hindu, Russian, 
American, French, Chinese, Spanish, Egyptian, Kaffir, 
Boer, Thibetan — in self-defence; every war being one 
for which England now hangs its head for shame. 

And the United States, now " defending itself " on the 
other side of the planet, are we going on the same career, 
to gain the world at the cost of every principle that made 
the soul of our country, only to find that we have not got 
the world at all, but it has got us ? 

Amid the wild play of ambitions and passions in the 
great world, where vast populations act inorganically like 
cyclones and volcanoes, one thing is left to the rational 
being : amid disorder he can be himself a source of order, 
amid injustice a centre of justice. 



384 PUBLIC SERVICE 

There is a sentence in the epistle to Christians dwelling 
among those world-conquering Romans, which is very- 
striking if carefully translated : " Be not anxious for lofty 
things, but know the charm of things lowly. " Indeed, the 
sense of it seems to be, " Fall in love with things lowly," 
It anticipates that marvellous passage in Shakespeare's 
"Henry VIII," where Cardinal Wolsey is portrayed be- 
fore and after his disgrace and downfall. To the fallen 
Cardinal's young friend the queen pictures her proud en- 
emy, hard, cruel, heartless, and the young man describes 
Wolsey as gentle, and to those around him smiling as a 
summer field. His fall from greatness was his happiest 
fortune, for then and not till then — these are Shake- 
speare's words — "he found the blessedness of being lit- 
tle." 

It took the greatest of poets to write that phrase ! 

In all races and ages genius has found in the Vale of 
Humility not only the heart's-ease which Bunyan found 
there, but also the priceless pearls, and the secret of real 
greatness. Confucius said : " The superior man knows the 
light, but keeps the shade." The Persian Saadi : " Make 
thyself dust to do anything well." Hafiz sings : — 

In the last day men shall wear 

On their heads the dust, 
As ensign and as ornament 

Of their lowly trust. 

George Fox the Quaker: "It was revealed to me that 
what other men trample on shall be thy meat." But a whole 
anthology might be made of these exaltations of humility. 
All very fine and poetical, says American youth, with 
its talent and enterprise, but not related to the world I 
am preparing to enter, to bear my part with self-reliance, 
to gain position, wealth, distinction. And beautiful is that 



PUBLIC SERVICE S85 

young courage and enthusiasm. True culture will not cliill 
but build on it. Every study, every lesson in these halls, 
brings the young mind into the presence of the historic 
masters of science, literature, philosophy, at whose feet 
he sits as an infant. His graduation means that by fulfill- 
ing every condition he has passed from small things to 
larger, by faithfulness in few things earned mastery of 
many. And he will not have completed his preparation for 
the larger life until he has read the law on its portal : 
"Whoso would be great, let him serve.'* 

My young friend, if you are great enough to do a little 
thing, when that is the thing that needs your service ; 
without self-assertion to stand by an humble cause or 
truth, you have your reward though you see no outward 
success or visible triumph. So without observation pro- 
ceeds the higher evolution of the world. He whose aim 
was not to be ministered to, but to minister, saw not his 
symbol in the fine plumed cock-fighting and crowing, but 
in the hen gathering her chickens under her wings. All 
the cock-fights of a barnyard for a year do not carry on 
so much evolution as a hen brooding on her eggs and 
caring for her brood. 

I warn you, young men, that if you adopt any high aim 
or cause, any intrusion of personal ambition into it will 
be an element of failure. Self-reliance is essential, but the 
self-reliant is precisely that man who must have the real 
self to rely on, and trust himself to no sham, no paraded 
self, — which were relying on vanity, not on his strength, 
but his weakness. 

Who can tell how far shines a good deed, a true word, 
even a kind look. Says Omar Khayyam, " The whole 
world shall be populous with that benefit of thine which 
saves one soul from despair.'' 



^ 



S86 PUBLIC SERVICE 

From early life I was charmed by tbe genius of the 
Russian novelist Tourguenieff, and had the happiness of 
meeting him in London. He was a grand man in every 
way, physically and mentally, intelligence and refinement 
in every feature. He was modest almost to shyness, and 
in his conversation — he spoke English — never loud or 
doctrinaire. At the Walter Scott Centennial he was pre- 
sent, — the greatest man at the celebration, — but did not 
make himself known. There was an excursion to Abbots- 
ford, and carriages were provided for guests. One in 
which I was seated passed Tourguenieff on foot. I alighted 
and walked with him, at every step impressed by his 
greatness and his simplicity. Only after his death was it 
revealed that to this unpretending writer was really due 
the emancipation of the serfs in Russia. 

Belonging to a family of rank and wealth, and highly 
educated, he lived with his widowed mother on the family 
estate worked by many serfs. Fond of sport, the youth 
went about the farms hunting, but observing closely the 
condition of the serfs and their homes. Under the title of 
" Sporting Annals " he wrote an exposure of the evil sys- 
tem, which reached the hands of the Emperor, Alexander 
II, who was deeply moved. On the death of his mother the 
estate came to young Tourguenieff, and he immediately 
emancipated every serf on it, giving to each family some 
land and a house. Then it was that the Emperor resolved 
to act. After many consultations he summoned the nobles 
and landowners, and told them the system must end, and 
they must end it peacefully. He said, "It is better, gentle- 
men, that emancipation should come from above than to 
wait until it comes from beneath." Without the shedding of 
a drop of blood, that great emperor emancipated ten times 
as many slaves as were liberated by violence in America, 



PUBLIC SERVICE 387 

and every family given a homestead. It was the noblest 
emancipation that ever occurred in history, and it was in- 
itiated by the pen and the example of a then obscure young 
man, who purposed only a small thing, justice in his own 
personal domain, never dreaming of larger results, and 
never to his death claiming credit for that only stainless 
reformation of his century. 

At the time when the author's little mustard seed was 
branching out to its vast proportions, revolutionary lead- 
ers who tried to seize the kingdom of heaven by violence 
— in Italy, Germany, France — saw their grand schemes, 
for which thousands gave their lives, turned to results that 
entombed their ideals. Innumerable experiences of this 
kind, no doubt, led the wiser teachers of mankind to their 
faith in the small seed, the humble leaven. The Chinese 
sage said, " The principles of the great man commence with 
the duties of common men and women, but in their highest 
extent they illuminate the universe." 

This faith is founded on reason. The vast elemental 
forces, which sometimes bring good intentions to bad re- 
sults and bad to good, submit to the control of art and 
science only in their small manageable forms. There are 
many millions of rose-gardens, with many-leaved and many- 
coloured roses. But nature never made them. Nature made 
only the wild-brier, the sweet-brier : the scientific gardener 
took the brier into his preparatory school, studied its laws, 
added leaf after leaf, assiduous only to graduate each indi- 
vidual flower, until the new rose existed and spread through 
the world, to be in turn the basis of further culture and 
many varieties, — among these the brierless rose. 

And may there not be a brierless character ? The most 
important things, perhaps, in college training are those 
that seem incidental. The teacher gives knowledge, but 



388 PUBLIC SERVICE 

the knowledge of to-day may not be that of to-morrow ; 
and the fine work of culture is the forging of the keys that 
through life will unlock all the granaries of knowledge, so 
that each may be fed according to his special need. And 
like unto that is the incidental culture of character. The 
play is not mere play, the chaff not without some wheat ; 
provincial angles smoothed away , manners refine manliness, 
and the college becomes a sort of studio for the art of liv- 
ing. That is the art of living with others, by lack of which 
many good-hearted people are wrecked, and homes laid in 
ruin. 

They have in Europe a so-called Holy Thorn, connected 
in legends with the thorn-crown of Jesus. Jesus said men 
could not gather good fruit from thorns, but a good many 
pious people seem to know better and cherish holy thorns. 
I have been reading a story called "Hecla Sandwith," by 
a new Baltimore writer, the scene of which is a typical pro- 
vincial town, manufacturing not collegiate, but one of the 
characters is a Dickinson graduate. People of various re- 
ligions are grouped together in a realistic way, and they 
mostly ascribe particular holiness to the thorns amid which 
their flowers of faith try to grow. One devout Quaker does 
not enter his own brother's house for many years because 
there is a spinet in it. Unenlightened consciences cause as 
much misery as vices ; and when lovers reach happiness at 
last it is after being pierced and torn in getting through 
the thorny hedges of prejudice, no real principle of faith 
or duty being involved at all. And even a principle is 
turned to a stony idol when human sacrifices are offered to 
it. And human sacrifices are not always physical. John 
Wesley, a true gentleman, was dining in company, and a 
severe preacher grasped the hand of a young lady who 
wore a jewelled ring. Lifting the hand of the girl above 



PUBLIC SERVICE 389 

the table lie called out, " What do you think of this, Mr. 
Wesley ? " With a beaming look on the maid's burning 
face, Wesley said, "I think that hand beautiful." 

If in the human world the deserts shall blossom like the 
rose, it will be when men and women have learned the art 
of making their hearts thornless. There is a flower of the 
mind whose fragrance is a spirit that shall render that man 
utterly unable to hate or to wound, and of a force whose 
simpleness shall seem heroic, though he be really the nor- 
mal man. Lycurgus was attacked by a brutal fellow, who 
knocked out one of his eyes. The people seized the assail- 
ant and dragged him before Lycurgus, and said, " He is 
yours, by law and equity, to slay." The lawgiver took his as- 
sailant to his house, and having attended to his own wound 
set himself to heal the grievous condition, mental and moral, 
of the man who had assailed him without cause. At the end 
of a year or more Lycurgus entered the assembly with a 
man at his side and said, " People, you gave me a savage ; 
I return to you a citizen." Heroic ? Nay, normal. Try all 
your logic, your common sense, on it ; you will find no 
other kind of action that would not have carried Lycurgus 
below his assailant. 

When it was proposed in France to abolish the death 
penalty Alphonse Karr said, " Yes, let us stop it, but let the 
assassins set the example." But old Valence said, " Let us 
punish the assassin without imitating him." Had Lycurgus 
ordered that the man who destroyed his eye should also 
lose an eye, what had been the difference between them ? 
All was in favour of the assailant, for he was not trained 
to teach men justice, but was a part of just that ferocity 
which it was the lawgiver's mission not to avenge, but to 
restrain and turn into useful force. 

I remember across the years a sermon McClintock gave 



390 PUBLIC SERVICE 

us on the sense o£ the Greek word for sin, — a/Aapna, — a 
missing of one's end. It is failure to reach happiness, 
which consists in bearing our fruit. Our own fruit ! Deep 
is that truth taught us of old that each heart must have 
an inward experience of its own ; each mind, too, must 
have a work of thought go on in it by which it passes from 
ignorance to knowledge, from the traditional to the per- 
sonal apprehension of things. Life gives each a several 
and particular experience, — trials of our own, events per- 
taining to ourself , — and these ought to correspond to an 
individual character and development by which, though 
we arrive at the same point with others, we can contribute 
something gathered on the special path we have travelled. 
And even the common road may be made special by the 
more exact observation, the more cheerful spirit, recogni- 
tion of the supreme importance of the passing hour. 

Youth gazes on the hills so blue in the distance, their 
blanched precipices seeming fretted silver, and knows not 
that when in later life it climbs the rugged heights it will 
look back and see its early path winding through a fairy- 
land, unrecognized till lost, the old campus abloom with 
romance, the old school and college resplendent with neg- 
lected opportunities. 

One called the wisest of men said, " Let no flower of the 
spring pass by thee ! " What would we, your gray fore- 
runners, young men, what would we not spare from our 
declining years to have even one more year of our youth- 
ful college life, with wisdom enough to see its beauty and 
opportunity as we see them now, and to redeem our failures 
and mistakes ? As the proverb says, you cannot put old 
heads on young shoulders ; nor is it desirable. But may we 
not demand of youth a living mental life proportionate to 
that of the body ? Happy the souls equal to their bodies ! 



PUBLIC SERVICE 391 

I heard a handsome preacher discoursing ascetic plati- 
tudes about the vileness of the flesh. Robust, rosy, clear- 
eyed, his contrasted cant suggested that had his soul even 
approximated the perfection of his disowned flesh we 
should have heard a grand sermon. In that body thousands 
of valves were opening and closing with precision ; harp- 
strings of the ear, lenses of the eye, exquisite network of 
vibrant nerves, all fulfilling their functions in the living 
day, while the morbid soul was groping in mediaeval deserts. 

It is the distinction of man from animals that he seeks ^ 
perfection. But a babe with perfection of a man would be 
a monster. In the garden of mental and moral culture the 
aim should be that each stage of growth shall have its sev- 
eral perfections, — the perfect bud, the perfect blossom, 
not inferior in their perfection to the fruitling or to the 
ripe fruit in which the series of perfections are garnered. 

And this development in the early education corre- 
sponds to the growing needs of the great world, where 
each talent has its potential value. Have we but one ? All 
the more should it be made the most of. He who buried 
his talent buried himself with it. Two talents improved 
gained the same joy as ten, and the one might have done 
the same. Darkness for that unprofitable bond-servant, 
but light and happiness for even the poor, the halt, the 
invalid, who sigh not for the unattainable, but distil every 
drop of sweetness and every virtue that courage and 
thought can win from any and every condition, and love 
bestow in benefit. 

There is no situation that does not admit of doing one's ^ 
best. I suppose that if there was one person in Jerusalem 
who might have despaired of doing any service to Jesus in 
his hour of pain and peril it was that poor woman, some- 
times confused with Mary Magdalene, whose heart led her 



392 PUBLIC SERVICE 

to his feet. She had a flask of spikenard to break, and she 
had a broken heart. She gave what she had. " She hath 
done what she could," He said. " The house was filled 
with the odour of the ointment," and every house in all 
time is filled with it. Because the fragrance was her great 
love. Had there been no spikenard, but a cup of water, a 
tear of sympathy, only a loving look to sustain the suffer- 
ing heart, the perfume would all have been there, as it this 
day fills the lowliest abode where affection and sweetness 
are poured out, and amid the sorrows of life hearts are 
loving much and doing all they can to diffuse around them 
happiness and peace. 



WILLIAM PENN MEMORIAL DAY 
DICKINSON COLLEGE 

COMMEMORATIVE OF THE 225TH ANNIVERSARY 

OF 

THE FRAME OF GOVERNMENT FOR PENNSYLVANIA 

ADDRESS BY 
MONCURE D. CONWAY, L. H. D. 

(Alumnus, Class of '49) 

CARLISLE, PENNSYLVANIA 
Published by the College 



WILLIAM PENN^ 

THE parable of the leaven hid in the measures of meal 
is well illustrated in history by the influence of 
Quakerism on the political evolution of the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries. Before the time of George Fox, with 
his gospel of the inner " Light that enlighteneth every 
man that cometh into the world," a moral nature was 
ascribed to Christians alone. When George Fox visited 
America the clergy opposed his doctrine of some divine 
quality innate in all mankind. Once when in controversy 
with a clergyman on this subject, he settled it by summon- 
ing from the neighbourhood a red, " unconverted " native 
and demanding through an interpreter whether, if he com- 
mitted any wrong, such as theft, he felt that he was doing 
wrong. Was there anything in him that seemed to tell him 
that he was guilty ? The red man answered yes. Then the 
great apostle asked the clergyman how he could explain 
that inward monitor, and the clergyman was quite unable 
to escape the force of this argument. The logic of such 
an admission may seem very easy from an academic point 
of view. 

The genius of George Fox has never been appreciated. 
The greatest imaginative intellect of America, Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, descendant of judges who sentenced Quakers 
at Salem, has described George Fox as " the truest apostle 

^ Address delivered before the Faculty and students of Dickinson Col- 
lege, and townspeople of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on the occasion of the 
celebration of the 225th anniversary of William Penn's Frame of Govern- 
ment for the People of Pennsjlvania, Thursday, April 25, 1907. 



896 WILLIAM PENN 

ttat has appeared on eartli for these eighteen hundred 
years." In the breast of that Quaker founder the inner 
light was also an inner fire. All forms, formulas, cere- 
monies were consumed by that flame. Its influence on the 
social and political world in any direct way was impossi- 
ble. " Soup is not eaten so hot as it 's cooked." The utili- 
zation of this transcendent force was inevitably relegated 
to a race of statesmanlike prophets and reformers. Of this 
race the first and foremost was the great friend and dis- 
ciple of George Fox, William Penn. Fired by the really 
revolutionary faith in the divine nature of every human 
being, implying as it did the equality and brotherhood of 
all, William Penn bore in himself also the measures of 
meal which his " inner light " was to leaven. Of gentle 
birth, son of a knighted Admiral, surrounded by persons 
of rank and wealth, Oxonian, lawyer, soldier, courtier, and 
at every step and phase trying to practise the principles of 
Quakerism, — even going to prison now and then, — he 
was thus steadily trained to become ian autocratic governor 
with a democratic ideal. 

William Penn discovered, however, before he was thirty, 
when his brilliant writings landed him six months in New- 
gate prison, that the British meal was so mixed with pul- 
verized pebble that his leaven would fare better among the 
exiles and aborigines in America. 

We have over here popular traditions about the English 
kings of the seventeenth century, in which they appear as 
terrible oppressors. No doubt, it was very oppressive to 
the magistrates of Massachusetts that Charles I reached 
his sceptre across the ocean and prevented the murder of 
witches and Quakers, and the American clergy no doubt 
thought it an outrage that Charles II should establish 
a protectorate under a Quaker, and that James II should 



WILLIAM PENN 397 

confirm that grant of tlie Province of Pennsylvania. 
Whatever our political philosophy may think of Eoyalty, 
we have to guard ourselves from ascribing to them any 
monopoly of the faults and injustices of their time. It was 
not in the spirit of a courtier that William Penn, in 
framing a government for New Jersey and for Pennsyl- 
vania, took care that the masses of the people, notwith- 
standing the divine spark in each, should not swamp the 
more enlightened. 

The Constitution, dated April 25, 1682, was preceded 
by a preface which bears somewhat the same relation to 
Penn's Constitution that the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, 1776, bears to our Constitution as framed in 1787. 
There is a difference between the pattern seen in the 
Mount and the practical embodiment of it devised by ex- 
pediency. I cannot better occupy a few moments than by 
quoting some declarations of this preface, in which is 
reflected the composite heart and soul of William Penn : — 

When the great and wise God had made the world, of 
all his creatures it pleased him to choose man his deputy 
to rule it. 

Such as would not be conformable to the holy law within 
should fall under the reproof of the just law without. 

Government seems to be a part of religion itself, a thing 
sound in its institution and end. 

Government is as capable of kindness, goodness, and 
charity, as a more private society. 

For particular frames and models, it will become me 
to say little ; and comparatively I will say nothing. My 
reasons are : — 

I^irst. That the age is too difficult and nice for it, there 
being nothing the wits of men are more busy and divided 
upon. It is true they seem to agree to the end, to wit, hap- 
piness ; but in the means, they differ as to divine, so to this 
human felicity; and the cause is much the same, not 
always want of light and knowledge, but want of using 



398 WILLIAM PENN 

them rightly. Men side with their passions against their 
reason, and their sinister Interests have so strong a bias 
upon their minds that they lean to them against the good 
of the things they know. 

Secondly. I do not find a model In the world that time, 
place, and some singular emergencies have not necessarily 
altered ; nor is it easy to frame a civil government that 
shall serve all places alike. 

Thirdly. I know what is said by the several admirers 
of monarchy^ aristocracy, and democracy, which are the 
rule of one, a few, and many, and are the three common 
ideas of government when men discourse on the subject. 
But I choose to solve the controversy with this small dis- 
tinction ; and it belongs to all three : Any government is 
free to the people under it (whatever be the frame) when 
the laiDS ride, and the people are a party to those laws ; 
and more than this Is tyranny, oligarchy, or confusion. 

But, lastly, when all is said, there is hardly one frame 
of government In the world so 111 designed by its first 
founders that, in good hands, would not do well enough ; 
and, story tells us, the best in ill ones can do nothing 
that Is great or good ; witness the Jewish and Homan 
states. Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men 
give them ; and as governments are made and moved by 
men, so by them they are ruined, too. Wherefore, govern- 
ments rather depend upon men, than men upon govern- 
ments. Let men be good and the government cannot be 
bad ; if it be ill, they will cure It. But, If men be bad, 
let the government be never so good, they will endeavour 
to warp and spoil it to their turn. 

I know some say, let us have good laws, and no matter 
for the men that execute them ; but let them consider, 
that though good laws do well, good men do better ; for 
good laws may want good men, and be abolished or 
evaded by ill men ; but good men will never want good 
laws, nor suffer ill ones. It is true good laws have some 
awe upon ill ministers, but that is when they have not 
power to escape or abolish them, and the people are gen- 
erally well and good; but a loose and depraved people 
(which is the question) love laws and an administration 



WILLIAM PENN 399 

like themselves. That, therefore, which makes a good 
Constitution, must keep it, viz., men of wisdom and virtue, 
qualities that, because they descend not with worldly in- 
heritances, must be carefully propagated by a virtuous 
education of youth ; for which after ages will owe more to 
the care and prudence of founders and the successive 
magistracy, than to their parents, for their private patri- 
monies. 

These considerations of the weight of government, 
and the nice and various opinions about it, made it 
uneasy to me to think of publishing the ensuing frame and 
conditional laws, foreseeing both the censures they will 
meet with, from men of differing humours and engage- 
ments, and the occasion they may give of discourse be- 
yond my design. 

But, next to the power of necessity (which is a solicitor 
that will take no denial), this induced me to a compliance, 
that we have (with reverence to God, and good conscience 
to men) to the best of our skill contrived and composed 
thQ frame and laws of this government, to the great end 
of all government, viz. : To support power in reverence 
with the people^ and to secure the people from the abuse 
of power ; that they may be free by their just obedience, 
and the magistrates honourable for their just administra- 
tion ; for liberty without obedience is confusion, and obe- 
dience without liberty is slavery. To carry this evenness 
is partly owing to the Constitution and partly to the ma- 
gistracy ; where either of these fail, government will be 
subject to convulsions; but where both are wanting, it 
must be totally subverted; then where both meet, the 
government is like to endure, which I humbly pray and 
hope God will please to make the lot of this Pensilvania. 

It is interesting to compare his Pennsylvania Constitu- 
tions with that prepared by Penn for an entirely Quaker 
community (West Jersey), five years before he came to 
America, as represented in the provision for religious 
liberty. 

That no men, nor number of Men upon Earth, hath 
Power or Authority to rule over Men's Consciences in 



400 WILLIAM PENN 

religious Matters, therefore it is consented, agreed, and 
ordained that no Person or Persons whatsoever within the 
said Province, at any Time or Times hereafter, shall 
be any ways upon any pretence whatsoever called in 
Question, or in the least punished or hurt, either in Per- 
son, Estate, or Privilege, for the sake of his Opinion, 
Judgment, Faith, or Worship towards God in Matters of 
Religion. But that all and every such Person, and Per- 
sons, may from Time to Time, and at all Times, freely 
and fully have and enjoy his and their Judgments, and the 
exercise of their Consciences in Matters of religious 
Worship throughout all the said Province. 

This was too broad a note for the government of his 
Province of Pennsylvania, where his colonists must face 
the preponderant power of the English church, and 
/ needed its cooperation. The great point here was, and it 
was vital for his government, that people should be re- 
lieved of the legal obligation to go to church. For security 
of this practical point — " nor be compelled to frequent 
or maintain any religious worship " — it was surrounded 
by the requirement that all must acknowledge one deity; 
and the bold inclusiveness of that provision was shown by 
the added provision that belief in "Jesus Christ, the 
Saviour of the World," is required in official servants. 
These conditions were promulgated in 1701, and repre- 
sented the happy fraternization described by Gabriel 
Thomas in 1698. " They," he says of the Pennsylvanians, 
" pay no Tithes, and their Taxes are inconsiderable ; the 
Place is free for all Persecution, in a Sober and Civil 
way ; for the Church of England and the Quaker bear 
equal Share in the Government. They live Friendly and 
Well together ; there is no persuasion for Religion, nor 
ever like to be ; 't is this that knocks all Commerce on 
the Head, together with high Imports, strict Laws, and 
cramping Orders." 



WILLIAM PENN 401 

We generally think of William Penn as subduing the 
so-called " savages " by his gentle justice, but I find it 
more wonderful that he could subdue the immigrant per- 
secutors. The first provision in the Charter given him by 
Charles II was that he was to " promote such useful co- 
modities as may bee of benefitt to us and our Dominions, as 
also to reduce the Savage Natives by gentle and just man- 
ners to the love of civill Societie and Christian Religion/* 
But his chief energies in the direction of civility had to be 
directed to the imported savagery. He framed " a com- 
mittee of manners, education, and arts, that all wicked 
and scandalous living may be prevented, and that youth 
may be successively trained up in virtue and useful know- 
ledge and arts." 

Is there now any school in America where good man- 
ners are taught ? There was one in the eighteenth century, 
that in which George Washington was taught, at Fred- 
ericksburg, Virginia. 

Some English scholar has recently written a book en- 
titled "Civilization; its Cause and Cure." The humble 
tribes of the earth and coloured people of this country 
would appreciate that volume if they could read it. 

When William Penn came to Pennsylvania two hun- 
dred and twenty-five years ago, he came to cure Civiliza- 
tion. It was at that time considered essential to Civiliza- 
tion to hang men and women for any theft amounting to 
three dollars. Penn's royal charter required him to bring 
here the principles of English Common Law, but not its 
parasitic growth ; so he preserved only two death penalties 
out of the two hundred, treason and murder. He sum- 
moned the aborigines to a grand Council. Deputies from 
all their tribes in this region met him on the site of what 
is now Philadelphia. They all came armed. They for the 



402 WILLIAM PENN 

first time saw white men approaching them without any 
weapons at all. Thereupon the red men threw away all 
their bows and arrows and tomahawks and knives. Through 
an interpreter Penn addressed them. First of all, he iden- 
tified the Great Spirit of their faith with his own divine 
Father. " The Great Spirit who rules the heavens and the 
earth, the Father of all men, bears witness to the sincerity 
of our wish to dwell with you in peace and friendship, 
and to serve you with all our power. We have met you 
unarmed, because our religion forbids the use of hostile 
weapons against our fellow creatures. We come not to 
injure others, — that is offensive to the Great Spirit, — but 
to do good, in which He delights. Having met in the broad 
way of truth and benevolence, we ought all to disdain 
deception, and regulate our conduct by candour, frater- 
nity, and love.*' He then unrolled the parchment of his 
treaty, securing their equal rights with the whites, — pledg- 
ing them equal share in the court of arbitration then estab- 
lished, equality in all mercantile transactions, and treatment 
"as of one flesh and blood with the Christians." The 
Indians responded in the same spirit, and so was made 
what Voltaire describes as " the only treaty between these 
natives and the Christians which was not ratified by an 
oath and which was never broken." So long as the colonial 
government founded by Penn lasted, that is, over seventy 
years, peace and good-will to men reigned in Pennsylvania. 
Never was any Quaker slain by an Indian, never an Indian 
slain. When the war with England had broken out, the 
Continental Congress sent out a commission which utilized 
the traditional friendship between Quakers and Indians, 
by the conference with the tribes held at Easton, Penn- 
sylvania. 

This brightest page in American history, Penn's Treaty, 



WILLIAM PENN 403 

contrasts with the history of colonization in Virginia, whose 
tercentenary will be celebrated this year. The first colony 
sent by Sir Walter Kaleigh to Virginia consisted of a 
fine fleet of seven vessels, under the command of Sir Rich- 
ard Grenville. They sailed in 1585, and were kindly re- 
ceived by the Indians, who were gentle and without crimes 
or vices. Governor Randolph, Washington's first attorney- 
general, in a history of Virginia never published, writes 
of this Sir Richard Grenville as follows : — 

Justice and philanthropy might have erased cruelty and 
robbery from the catalogue of expedients for establishing 
the dominion of England. It might have been fixed on 
the stable foundation of affection in the habits of a people 
as yet almost without a crime. Then the parade of an 
ardour to diffuse Christianity might have been, and ought 
to have been, exchanged for some of its best dictates, 
mercy, peace, and good-will. But Grenville, while he re- 
mained in Virginia, possessed power uncontrolled, which 
is too often insensible to better motives than the short and 
nervous system of terror. A silver cup having been stolen 
from him by an Indian, the theft was expiated by burning 
the towns, and destruction of the corn of the nation. This 
greatly disproportionate revenge was speedily communi- 
cated throughout the Indian confederacies, and replaced 
the first impressions of attachment to the colony by an 
unrelenting hatred to every Englishman. The supplies 
which the Indians had furnished in the most afflicting emer- 
gencies were withheld. Confusion and broils ensued among 
the colonists from being straitened in provisions ; and 
Lane was obliged to canton them into small parties in 
quest of roots, oysters, and other accidental sustenance; 
and fearing extremities of the most dangerous kind, he 
resolved to transport to England his enfeebled remnant of 
men whenever he should have the means of doing so. 

This famous and most infamous Grenville, still called 
" gallant knight " in history, soon left the people he brought 
over, and carried a cargo of skins and furs to England, 



404 WILLIAM PENN 

and then devoted himself to fighting Spain. In 1591 he 
was mortally wounded, and in dying on a Spanish deck is 
said to have uttered words which have become a sort of 
epitaph: "Here I, Richard Grenville, die with a joyous 
and quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a true 
soldier ought to do, fighting for his country, queen, reli- 
gion, and honour, my soul willingly departing from this 
body, leaving behind the lasting fame of having behaved 
as every valiant soldier is in his duty bound to do." 

Few men have ever done more evil than that self-satis- 
fied coward, who devastated the peaceful villages of gentle 
tribes, comparatively unarmed, who had nourished his 
colonists without payment, slaying men, women, and chil- 
dren because of a small personal loss. It was a crime that 
never ended. The gentle natives were transformed into 
avengers. The colony was destroyed. 

Virginia and Maryland received the name and title of 
the Virgin Mary long before the English ascribed the 
names to royal English women. The only being now visi- 
ble as a Madonna, in all that scene of colonial cruelty 
extending over twenty years, is an Indian princess called 
Pocahontas, who repeatedly rescued the whites from the 
retribution they deserved. For it was not John Smith 
alone that she saved from execution, but when King Pow- 
hatan, her father, terrified by the diabolical force of gun- 
powder, resolved to exterminate the colony by craft, — the 
natural weapon of the weak against the strong, — it was 
Pocahontas who sped to Jamestown and gave warning to 
the English. It is difficult to find among those colonists 
any really lovable or even honourable figure. The best of 
them is John Smith, whose injustices were partly due to 
the feud bequeathed by Grenville and other predecessors. 

The loud and wide protest which has been made by the 



WILLIAM PENN 405 

friends of peace against the amazing plan of making the 
Jamestown Exposition mainly a display of what its pro- 
gramme calls " The Splendours of War," at the very 
moment when the whole world is endeavouring to brand 
the horrors of War, has been defended on the ground that 
the colony was planted by the naval and military great- 
ness of Great Britain. But what military or naval event 
in the colony of Virginia does not represent rather the 
shame of Great Britain ? 

It is painful for an old son of Virginia to recall such 
events. The proverb that bids us say nothing of the dead 
but good is not applicable to evil-doers who do not remain 
dead, but rise from their graves after three hundred years 
to raise aloft the standard of the pirate and the slave-ship 
expanded into the " splendours of war," — that is, the 
destructive armaments which so largely absorb the wealth 
of nations. 

Quakerism was not in spirit a religion of public service 
aiming to reform mankind, it was a mystical individualism ; 
and it was because the outside world would not leave those 
private consciences in peace, but insisted that they should 
conform, — take the oath in courts, remove the hat before 
magistrates, marry in "steeple-houses," pay tithes, pay 
tribute to war and slavery, — that they were compelled in 
self-defence to arraign the outside world. Great Britain 
had to stop their arraignment by surrender. It had to con- 
cede legitimacy to their self -marriages, allow them affirma- 
tion instead of oath, relieve them of church and war taxes. 
Quakers became a privileged class. But at length large 
intellects among them discovered that their unconventional 
dress and fads were trivial compared with the world-wide 
wrongs revealed in their persecutions; so the spiritual 
power in it went outside the Quaker conventicle ; the inner 



406 WILLIAM PENN 

light of George Fox passed beyond William Penn, and 
in such Quakers as John Dickinson and Thomas Paine 
in the past, in Whittier, John Bright, Lucretia Mott of 
our time, became a pillar of fire in political reformation. 
" Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it 
abideth alone ; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit." 
When the rule of organized Quakerism ceased in this 
State, its influence became all the more potent in every 
church. The regular Meetings disowned members for 
uniting in outside societies, even those against slavery, but 
what Quakerism had wrought through its proprietary 
threescore years and ten made Pennsylvania leader in the 
moral nation. The first anti-slavery society was formed in 
Philadelphia before the Declaration of Independence. 
Pennsylvania was the first State to abolish slavery (1781). 
Pennsylvania established the first unsectarian colleges, — 
one at Philadelphia in 1756, and one in Carlisle in 1783. 
There was cherished here not only the name and honour 
of Dickinson, who before the Ke volution was the most 
eminent writer in America, but his humane spirit. I re- 
member well about the middle of last century, on our col- 
lege platform and at our anniversaries, utterances of lofty 
American ideals transfused with the spirit of Penn and 
Dickinson. The very soul of Pennsylvania flowered in one 
memorable oration by a preacher of genius, afterwards 
United States attorney in this, his native State. 

Although a satisfactory biography of William Penn 
remains to be written, enough of his life-work is accessible 
to enable us to realize that he, William Penn, had to deal 
with the most complex and menacing problems beset- 
ting the inauguration of self-government among a people 
trained in arbitrary misgovernment in the Old World ; 
and if one studies Provost StilM's excellent Life of John 



WILLIAM PENN 407 

Dickinson, one of the most admirable contributions to 
American history, he may realize that the overthrow of 
Penn's republic, by the militarism evoked by frontier war 
against the French and their red allies, bequeathed to the 
finest statesman and jurist of that time a complex task 
similar to that of Penn, his achievement being in turn 
overthrown by the militarism of the Revolution. The stu- 
dent will find that the Pontiac War and the Eevolution 
broke out while all the best men and women were pleading 
for peace, as they plead to-day ; and if he carefully con- 
siders the present situation of our country, he will find 
that the task of thinkers and statesmen is as complex and 
difficult as any that in the three preceding centuries cul- 
minated in wars. 

Every American who mingled in public affairs fifty 
years ago now finds himself in a new country. At that 
time we were concerned with only one evil. Slavery. The 
scandal and outrage that such an institution should exist 
in our great republic gave us some compensation in the 
splendid orators, poets, prophets evoked, and the moral 
inspiration of multitudes who for the first time conceived 
some passion for personal Liberty. In one of Haw- 
thorne's tales a scientific chemist resolved to remove a 
birthmark from the face of his bride. The potent liquid 
acts on her cheek like a charm ; the face lies faultless be- 
fore him. But alas, she is dead ! The America of ante- 
bellum time exists no more. In our southern region there 
had been developed many fine leaders of men, because they 
were brought up and lived as country gentlemen, far away 
from fashionable dissipations ; and because their slaves 
worked for them and supported their families, had the 
leisure to study history and politics and to consult with 
the best people of neighbouring estates. These were the 



408 WILLIAM PENN 

Clays and Calhouns and Randolphs, who indeed were only 
the especially eloquent among a large race of statesmen 
remarkable for their distinctive personalities. That rac6 
has gone with the birthmark in which it was rooted. For 
our nation generally the operation bequeathed another dis- 
figurement, — an increase of military ambition and lust 
of empire, a consecration of the instrument by which slav- 
ery was removed, — the Sword, on whose hilt even when 
sheathed our hand ever rests, is a menace to the world. 

I witnessed seven years ago the unveiling in Paris of the 
equestrian statue of George Washington. He has his hat 
in his left hand and his right uplifts his sword towards 
which his face is raised. The Daughters of the Revolution 
who presented the statue to France intended it to mean 
Washington invoking the blessing of heaven on his sword, 
but some puzzled French gentlemen who sat near me dis- 
puted whether Washington was worshipping his sword or 
defying the heavens like Ajax. So differently may people 
see things. Our government may send out battleships, pro- 
nouncing each one a messenger of Peace ; but other nations 
respond with effusive flatteries which hardly conceal their 
fear or distrust. It is now Utopian to think of the white 
native of America approaching foreigners as Penn ap- 
proached the aborigines, unarmed, and trusting the moral 
forces to draw like a new star all human hearts, bringing 
not bow and spear, but gold, frankincense, and myrrh to 
a new-born Prince of Peace. 

It may appear a very simple thing that our Alma Mater 
here in Carlisle, originally founded as a fortress against the 
Indians, whose descendants are now taught on the very 
spot where the military barracks stood, should establish 
anew the cult of Peace. Peace? Why, everybody is in 
favor of Peace ; even our warriors declare that they fight 



WILLIAM PENN 409 

for it. But the sentiment of Peace, seemingly simple as 
light, is, like light, one of the most complex of things. A 
prism will reveal in your simple sunbeam its rainbow, and 
if it be followed into the wonders of spectrum analysis you 
find a distinctive rainbow for everything in nature, from 
grass-blade to planet. And war is not simple, — not more 
than the dark spectrum fringing the bright one, invisible, 
stored with consuming heat. From infusoria devouring 
each other in a water-drop to men devouring each other's 
states, the dark and destructive forces have had their evil 
evolution. Insomuch that there is a war-philosophy claim- 
ing that all the steps of progress have been achieved by 
war. It is the cock with proud crow announcing to the 
farmyard at dawn that he has just brought up the sun. 

It is probable that the department founded here this day, 
"Peace and Public Service," is the first of its kind in any 
institution. It is surely not founded in the interest of that 
" Statutory Patriotism " which Governor Hoch of Kansas 
has rebuked, by vetoing a bill to set up a flag at every 
school-door for every child to salute. There is to be antici- 
pated here not the ceremonial cult, but the fruitful culture 
of that genuine love of country which seeks to understand 
its faults as well as its virtues, to heal the defects and fos- 
ter the excellencies of the Commonwealth wherein our 
influence can be exerted. The task is, I think, heavier in 
our own country than in any other ; partly because of our 
geographical irresponsibility to other countries, and partly 
because of the rapidity with which are weakened the laws 
which our founders set as dikes against the flood of that 
Mobocracy which arrests the development of a Democracy 
entitled to govern itself, because of ability to govern it- 
self. 

Here we are, with ninety million masters, themselves 



410 WILLIAM PENN 

mastered by the superstition that the Voice of the People is 
the Voice of God. It is worship of the god Majority : if 
forty millions vote one way, and forty millions and one vote 
the other way, that one binds the defeated to accept the 
verdict of that one voter against their principles. There 
is no utility in any lamentations over political conditions, 
which are really inorganic as our mountains. When some 
one said to John Wesley the Voice of the People is the 
Voice of God, he answered that he could not believe it was 
the Voice of God that cried " Crucify him ! Crucify him ! " 
Somebody has disguised the motto in Latin, — " Vox 
Populi, Vox Dei," — but it is modern; classic antiquity 
had no such notion. For many centuries our ideas of gov- 
ernment have been so warped and adulterated by pious 
prejudices and local or transient interests, that it is diffi- 
cult to find any really great and unbiassed work on poli- 
tics this side of the wonderful treatise of Aristotle. Let us 
read what Aristotle says of Law : " He who wishes the Law 
to command seems to recognize no other authority than 
that of God himself and reason ; but he who holds that it 
is for man to command, adds the power of the fierce beast. 
For the passions have something of that violence, and wrath 
corrupts and degrades even the most virtuous of men when 
invested with power. One may say then of Law, that it is 
an intelligence without passion." 

Here we find more than three centuries before our era 
the same gangrene affecting authority which afflicts the 
world to-day. Robespierre, when a young judge, resigned 
his seat on the bench rather than sentence a criminal to 
death ; Marat was a gentle physician and scientific author : 
presently made chiefs of the revolutionary Convention, 
they decapitated their political opponents. When Napo- 
leon Bonaparte became emperor he said to a friend : 



WILLIAM PENN 411 

"Men deserve the contempt with which they inspire me. 
I have only to put some gold lace on the coat of my vir- 
tuous republicans, and they immediately become just what 
I wish them." 

The multiplication of offices, agents, commissions in 
this country is a great evil, and it sets the example for 
the whole of society. Wherever two, or at any rate three, 
are anywhere gathered together, one must be president 
and the others secretary and treasurer. George A. Cof- 
fey, in the Union Philosophical oration of 1849 already 
alluded to, prophesied the advent of " Social Democracy." 
It was, perhaps, the first time that phrase was used in this 
country; it has since become domesticated in Europe, 
while in America here we have an amalgam of socialisms 
resolved apparently to turn half the male population of 
the country into official rulers of the other half. Social- 
istic philosophers assure us that when their system is estab- 
lished we shall all be not only equal but free ; but trade 
unions in their treatment of non-union men are not en- 
couraging to the individualist, and no record of strikes, 
when troops are absent, warrants a belief that wings will 
sprout on the shoulders of Socialist officials, and that they 
will represent that " intelligence without passion " which 
Aristotle declares Law to be. Ah, the splendid young in- 
tellects I have known in my time sink into commonplace 
functionaries ! It is hard, where all offices are elective and 
even judges must cater to the majority, — to which no 
educated man would think of submitting his religious or 
ethical opinions, — it is hard enough for a man to enter 
into the Public Service without some loss to his genius 
and personal character. Sainte-Beuve says, " There is in 
most men a dead young poet whom the man survives." 
The young poet generally dies of collectivism. The brave 



412 WILLIAM PENN 

effort to serve the people gravitates towards tlie fatal role 
of servility. We have a large and flourishing Authors Club 
in New York, with most members of which I have long 
had some intimacy, and sometimes I am induced to think 
that there is as much talent among our young writers as 
there was among their more famous elders, although no 
successors to the great figures of literature appear on our 
horizon. These men, who fill the magazines of the country, 
feel that there is no longer an audience for grave and pro- 
found thought. Their genius is like the seed fallen on 
stony ground, — that is, on a population interested only 
in political, military, and commercial interests. The young 
poet sometimes withers away because his ideals have not 
what Jesus called " depth of earth." It wastes away in 
the illusive dream of seeing its ideal realized, instead of 
devoting its art to see that the real shall be idealized. Al- 
though a spirit that longs for a fairer world is within, the 
vision on which its eye is fixed is traditional. The ardent 
reformer is passionate because there is surviving in him 
the religious sentiment of a Promised Land, of the Mil- 
lennium. A great spiritual revolution has taken place in 
the last hundred years, — a revolution in the popular 
heart, and a corresponding one in its intellectual leaders ; 
this revolution is first, that the hopes of the masses have 
shifted largely from heaven to earth, religion, reinforced 
by suffering, exciting them to seize the kingdom of 
Heaven by violence ; and secondly, the philanthropic theo- 
ries of visionaries devising schemes for universal bliss. 

Ah, I dread these terrestrial Promised Lands ! Social- 
ist, Social Democratic, Social Cooperative, and the rest; 
whatever their name, and however varied the vision, they 
all lie beyond Red Sea, — blood red. In the French Con- 
vention in 1792 there was a German baron, Anacharsis 



WILLIAM PENN 413 

Clootz, to whom is ascribed the saying that " the Demo- 
cratic Principle is so precious that it might fairly be 
purchased by the destruction of the entire human race." 
And now there is a philosophical Russian Prince (Kropot- 
kin) who, in his latest book, " The Conquest of Bread," 
declares that the present social constitution of the whole 
world must be destroyed, — not one stone left on another, 
— and then Constructive Anarchism will begin its happy 
era, and show that mankind are naturally good, social, 
mutually helpful, peaceful. In fact, most people are that 
when they have all they want ; but Prince Kropotkin, 
whom I have heard, is so fascinated by his Land of Pro- 
mise that the intervening bloody sea seems only an orna- 
mental pond of rose-water. What the brilliant Russian 
ignores is the inevitable deterioration of any people by 
wading through the blood of others who stand in their way, 
relapsing into the same habits and methods of their worst 
tyrants, familiarizing themselves with all the brutalities 
of nature, — sting, fang, claw, beak, serpent craft, — re- 
viving in actuality the ferocities symbolized in the animal 
crests of their barbarian conquerors. Something might be 
said, perhaps, for anarchism, even with this menagerie of 
recruits, were it certain that the Promised Land of milk 
and honey would be attained. But never in all history has 
violent revolution achieved any such result. Of course, 
historians of their own country, when writing of its wars 
and warriors, use pens from the peacock's tail ; but we have 
discovered gradually the enormities of Cromwell's insurrec- 
tion, and those of the French Revolution ; we can recognize 
that neither the British nor the French have ever recovered 
from those epochs of massacre. But, as the psalmist says, 
who can understand his own errors ? Of late a few criti- 
cal and exact historians, like Sidney G. Fisher, McMaster, 



414 WILLIAM PENN 

and Rhodes, have cautiously revealed the seamy side of 
the American Revolution. That war, which has done more 
than any historic event to consecrate the sword, is the 
very war of all others that illustrates the truth of what a 
Quaker (Mifflin) said to George Washington. It was to- 
wards the close of Washington's career that the Quaker 
said to him, " General, the worst peace is better than the 
best war." After a few moment's silence Washington said, 
" Mr. Mifflin, there is more truth in what you say than 
most people are willing to admit." Franklin, too, had 
witnessed the Revolution, and said " there never was a 
good war or a bad peace." When the excitement about 
the tax on tea occurred, Franklin, then representing the 
colonies in London, wrote over to the leading patriots, 
telling them that the tax had been imposed by a ministry 
and would be soon removed by the ministry. A succession 
of such taxes had been removed by the ministry, — taxes 
on glass, paints, stamps, and other things, — on petitions 
from America. The only remaining tax, though it did not 
raise as much as a thousand dollars, and that not compul- 
sory, — there being practically no burden on the colonies 
at all, — involved a law question of the nicest kind; 
whether Great Britain, which was under the necessity of 
protecting its colonies against invasion from the French 
and the western tribes, had the right to exact from the 
colonies so protected contributions for the large and con- 
tinuous expenses. Some of the best and most patriotic 
jurists in this country maintained that such taxation was 
just, others claiming that the contributions should be vol- 
unteered by the colonial councils. But a small mob in 
Boston, masked and disguised as red men, lynched an 
English ship and destroyed its cargo of tea. Those igno- 
rant rioters took a great state question out of the hands 



WILLIAM PENN 415 

of great statesmen, — Franklin, Dickinson, Adams, Jef- 
ferson, Peyton Randolph, — trained lawyers calmly con- 
sidering a momentous law question judicially, just as our 
Supreme Court might now consider a question of taxing 
our distant colonies. And we have been hitherto expected 
to celebrate as heroes those lynchers who brought on the 
military occupation of Boston by British soldiers ; that in 
turn bringing on the fury and panic of country folk 
around, one of whom at Lexington disobeying his captain 
flashed his musket at a peaceful British company ; these 
in panic replying with a volley that killed seven or eight ; 
violence breeding violence, into the eight years' bloodshed 
wherein we are taught to see a Saint George Washington 
spearing a George Third dragon. But " Independence " 
is an equivocal word ; the winning of colonial independence 
of England involved during that war a frightful tram- 
pling of that personal independence extolled in the De- 
claration of Independence. Many of the finest men in 
America, who as magistrates and officials regarded it as 
perjury to help overthrow a Crown they had sworn to 
support, were exiled from the country, their estates con- 
fiscated. They fled to England, to the Bermudas, and 
sixty thousand sought refuge in Canada, where they were 
supported by compassion. It was then that the lawlessness 
called lynching began. As these gentlemen bound by their 
sworn loyalty to England, and Quakers bound by their 
religion, had the existing codes on their side, the mob 
extemporized a lawless code for them, and although the 
victims were rarely if ever slain, many influential gen- 
tlemen were tarred and ridden on rails. 

Who was to blame ? Nobody. When men take up arms 
for any cause, good or bad, individual reason is merged 
in an irresponsible force, freedom of will is lost, the mass 



416 WILLIAM PENN 

acts inorganically, like the earthquake. As was written of 
old, " the Lord was not in the earthquake." And where the 
earthquake takes the form of prolonged manslaughter, 
the ferocious forces evoked can never be controlled. That 
same Revolutionary War, universally applauded, is a sa- 
lient illustration of the fact that a war never ends. The 
victory exhausted our resources, military and pecuniary, 
leaving humiliated Britain still wealthy, still mistress of 
the seas, possessed of more territory in America than ours, 
and in command of six warlike Indian nations on our 
northwestern frontiers. The colonies had engaged by the 
treaty of peace to pay their large English debts, and were 
too impoverished to fulfil the treaty. Eepudiation was 
imminent. The danger that Britain would recover her 
lost colonies seemed so great that the colonies, though 
sharply divided and jealous of each other, were jealous 
enough of their several sovereignties to form a league for 
defence against their common enemy. But two colonies 
refused to enter the union unless the others agreed to 
protect slavery and the slave-trade. Thus, the danger 
resulting from the defeat of England put slavery and 
twenty more years of free slave-trading into our Consti- 
tution. The War of Independence bequeathed us a feud 
which led to the War of 1812, and by necessitating com- 
promises with slavery bequeathed us the Mexican War, the 
Kansas War, and seventy years of sectional strife cul- 
minating in a Civil War wherein a half million men were 
slain. And that old Revolution, — prolonged by the wars 
it bred, — has it ended yet ? 

The mob-murder called "lynching" is an aggravated 
relic of the Revolution ; also the fact that now, fortified 
by the sea, in a time of peace, so dominant is military 
pomp and pride that the United States is paying annually 



WILLIAM PENN 417 

in its swollen and largely fraudulent pension-roll, and its 
army and navy, more than France and Germany put to- 
gether. The masses of people in other lands associate our 
prosperity and power with our continuous war ; and while 
culture is living in an era of Evolution, the multitude 
believe in Revolution, and many that dynamite is the di- 
vinity that shapes the ends of progress. The murderous 
method having steadily failed in the Old "World, because 
leading brains are no longer revolutionary, their popula- 
tions are swarming over here. They can be subjected to 
some kind of selection as to their health and resources, 
and each is gravely asked, "Are you an Anarchist?" But 
further filtration is impossible ; nor is it desirable so long 
as the official filters are mostly appointed without any 
wisdom of selection. 

It is not a pleasant or a pleasing task to question criti- 
cally national traditions which have come to have heroic 
and poetic associations in the young American mind. Why 
disperse these past illusions ? Because, alas, they are not 
past. They come, and they were never the real past : like 
the ghost of Hamlet's father, they come in armour from 
head to foot, inciting to vengeance and murder. So con- 
crete and fatal may a fable or fantasy become. 

When historic wars are traced to their main sources, 
the common answer is fatalistic. " It had to come." Of 
course it will come if men believe it inevitable, and submit 
in advance. But that fatalism is the abdication of reason. 
" Man," said William Penn, — " Man is the deputy of 
God on earth." Penn weighed his words. This vicegerent 
Man was not to him the mere biped animal sometimes 
crowned and sceptred, but a being incarnating the quali- 
ties distinctive of Man, — reason, love, freedom, justice. 
These make the spirit of light forever brooding over the 



418 WILLIAM PENN 

realm of darkness, and by strong enforcement of gentle- 
ness subduing tbe powers of darkness. There are many- 
old pictures of tbe archangel spearing dragon or demon, 
but one I saw at Sorrento in which a hideous Satan lies 
prostrate at the feet of a little white-robed child : no 
weapon is there, but the little hand points upward to a 
white dove, from whose wings emanate the rays that no 
demon can resist. 

In our American history we see mailed soldiers spearing 
adversaries that seemed to them diabolical, entailing on 
their successors a heritage of violence ; but among the 
founders of this nation shines one — just one — unarmed, 
save by a white- winged dove above him: William Penn. 
And although that dove was at last laid low by the arrow 
of war, it remains in history that after the constitutional 
J consecration of this State to the Spirit of Peace, Pennsyl- 
vania remained for seventy years the only domain on the 
face of the earth in which no battle occurred. And, in- 
deed, the dove itself, though vanished from the political 
sky, took refuge in the Pennsylvania breast. 

There is nothing gained by mourning over the might- 
have-beens of the past, or crowing over yesterday's sun- 
rise, but much utility in comprehending them, — their 
root and fruit. For this dav we are surrounded by evils 
and perils as serious as any that besieged our forerunners, 
while we possess the advantages of experience and science 
which they had not. The experience of the world long ago 
realized that "War is Hell," but of late is discovering 
that it is also inglorious. 

A philosopher said, " Civilization is a chick in the ^^g*"* 
Sometimes there seems reason to fear that the ^gg is 
rotten and the chick dead ; but listening close one hears 
a chirp or two. One sounds in the fact that there is not 



WILLIAM PENN 419 

now, either in Europe or in America, any military man of 
whom even his countrymen are proud on account of his 
military career. General Picquart has become Minister of 
"War in France because he exposed the crimes of the mili- 
tary chieftains in the Dreyfus case, the lies and forgeries 
with which they convicted and kept in exile and years of 
torture an innocent man. Those chieftains cast Picquart 
also into prison; but now he is commander over them 
all, and is engaged in abolishing court-martial trials in 
time of peace. Lies and forgeries are, of course, highly 
moral in war, where they are called strategy ; and the 
French generals now in disgrace are overwhelmed with 
dismay at finding themselves in a country where such 
militarist methods, — falsehood and forgery, — virtuous 
against hostile foreigners, become crimes when used in 
peaceful communities even to support the infallibility of 
military courts. 

To remember again that description of civilization as a 
chick in the egg, another hopeful chirp of that unborn 
chick is audible in the new kind of literature which In- 
dustrialism has unintentionally inaugurated. It is not so 
brilliant as the literature passing away, but it searches 
behind the scenes where the splendours of war are mounted, 
and sees the famous warriors in document apart from the 
halos time has given them. The statue of Frederick, 
called the Great, presented by the present Emperor of 
Germany, is set up in Washington. Frederick, because of 
his secret hatred of George the Third, induced France to 
recognize American independence, pledging himself to fol- 
low ; France did so ; Frederick broke his word and would 
not follow even George the Third in recognizing our inde- 
pendence. Against all French protests he allowed the 
Hessian troops to reinforce the British ; he refused to see 



420 WILLIAM PENN 

a commissioner from Congress, but allowed his valise of 
papers to be stolen by the British agent in Berlin. Histori- 
cally, nothing could be more preposterous than homage 
at Washington to the one ruler of that era who refused 
pointedly the recognition either of General Washington 
or this Republic, which his French correspondents long 
endeavoured to elicit from him. There is a story of a 
lawyer in Kentucky rising to a point of order and ex- 
claiming, "May it please your honour, the plaintiff's 
counsel is presuming on the ignorance of this court ! " 
The Emperor William seems to have presumed success- 
fully in the same way, but perhaps we may have first pre- 
sumed on his ignorance with our old fable that Frederick 
presented a sword to George Washington. 

Carlyle took up Frederick as a hero, and wrote a great 
history in which that hero dwindles into a man by no 
means great, but of meannesses that caused the great- 
hearted biographer regret that he had written the work. 
What Carlyle did for Frederick, a great French historian, 
Frederic Masson, has done for Napoleon Bonaparte. 
Masson, the last author of genius clinging to Bonaparte, 
is so truthful that he has explored every fact and brought 
to light every document bearing on the subject. The facts 
prove that Bonaparte, lifted into power by the revolution- 
ary cry for Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, not only 
betrayed every principle of that revolution by assuming 
a despotic crown, but utilized all the military forces of 
France to secure his crown by putting his brothers and 
sisters on the thrones of Europe. About six of that 
Corsican family were raised in this way, — in Spain, 
Rome, Naples, and other captured places, — but unfortu- 
nately for the chieftain of the clan, treason was the 
family trait. Bonaparte loved none of them, but no 



WILLIAM PENN 421 

doubt supposed they had brains enough to know that 
if he fell they would all fall, too. But they had not his 
brains, only his selfishness. It was a duel between allied 
monarchs fighting for their crowns and one man fighting 
for his crown ; and each brother, considering it the supreme 
thing to make his own crown safe, bargained with the 
Allies. The historian Masson cannot yet give up his idol. 
Bonaparte remains for him an invincible war-god, whom 
it took six Judases to defeat. But the lesson remains 
that the greatest military man was overthrown by his petty 
personal ambition to make all Europe his throne, by seat- 
ing on each throne captured a kinsman, however incompe- 
tent or treacherous. 

The legend that Eome was once saved by the cackling 
of geese sounds like a fable grown up among world con- 
querors of the way in which, amid the disorders of war, stu- 
pidity avails more than intelligence. A remarkable example 
of this occurred in the American Civil War. The Confed- 
erate commander, Robert E. Lee, was certainly the most 
accomplished military man in this country on either side. 
An English ofiicer detailed to follow closely the Confeder- 
ate operations wrote a manual, now used in English mili- 
tary schools, showing the marvellous skill of General Lee, 
with his inferior numbers, culminating in his overwhelm- 
ing repulse of the Army of the Potomac at Fredericksburg. 

But then and there the victorious General Lee lost his 
cause forever. The routed Federal army lay penned up in 
Fredericksburg, under the Confederate guns on the im- 
pregnable heights just beyond the town. The bridges across 
the Rappahannock were gone ; there was no retreat possible 
for the vast Army of the Potomac. It might have been de- 
stroyed, and in that case a Napoleonic intervention would 
probably have reinforced the anti-war party in the North, 



422 WILLIAM PENN 

and the Union could hardly have gathered another army- 
vast enough to conquer. 

But Lee's guns remained silent. The victory was not 
followed up. The Army of the Potomac reconstructed its 
pontoons and escaped in good order, and from that day 
and night the Confederacy was a " lost cause." 

A great many conjectures have been made as to why Lee 
did not fire on that demoralized army. But lately I had 
some correspondence with Charles Francis Adams, now 
president of the Massachusetts Historical Society, who was 
a soldier in the Union army, and is the best informed man 
living on the details of that struggle. He tells me that he 
had asked the officer most intimate with the events at Fred- 
ericksburg why Lee had not destroyed the Federal army. 
The answer was that Lee could not conceive of any general 
being fool enough to get his army into such a fix. He be- 
lieved that Burnside must have laid a trap, and that his 
Confederate army would have fallen into a trap if they had 
tried to pursue. As a matter of fact, Burnside, incapable 
of any plan or trap, was far away, ignorant of what had 
occurred to his army. There is no officer in the annals of 
that war to whose skill this Union owes so much as it owes 
to the idiocy of that general, — an idiocy so immeasurable 
that it staggered the imagination of the most accomplished 
commander of his time, and brought to naught all the 
cleverness, skill, sacrifices of the able founders and man- 
agers of the Confederacy. 

Even in the course of affairs directed by intelligence, 
and not by the chaotic forces of blind passion, it sometimes 
happens that good actions seem to work evil results, and 
bad actions work good results ; but the object of our cul- 
ture, intellectual and moral, is to attain the wisdom which 
can control in most cases the conditions amid which we have 



WILLIAM PENN 423 

to work. In public service for which the educated youth 
of this country must be trained, it is of the utmost impor- 
tance that it should be an actual service to a real public, 
and not a waste of force upon some ideal non-existent 
public. The fine seed must not be sown on clouds, however 
rosy. Every government has faults, but raging cannot heal 
them. It is a disgrace that women should be politically dis- 
f ranchished along with lunatics ; the disgrace, however, is not 
that of the women but of the governments. They confess 
that they are as the pitch which hands cannot touch with- 
out being defiled. The English " suffragettes," in their vio- 
lent invasion of Parliament, are wasting a force which in 
another direction might gradually be effectual. They are 
at this very moment, when the hope of peace is widespread, 
reminded that they may not vote because they cannot fight. 
Very well : suppose then that women should quietly resolve 
that they will not assist in the continuance of the military 
violence for which they are unfit. If all those " suffra- 
gettes," and the multitudes of their sex who quietly sym- 
pathize with them, should resolve that in no case will they 
ever marry any man whose profession is manslaughter, the 
social stigma of inability to vote Would be transferred to 
the sex which supports its monopoly of suffrage on its mo- 
nopoly of legalized murder. I do not advise any league of 
that kind, but simply indicate such divorce from the brutal 
and preference for the human passions, as in the direction 
of the organizing forces. So far as the suffrage is concerned, 
women are practically not in any different situation from 
the enlightened and refined men, who vote if at all under 
duress of the boss to make ignorant masses his dictators. 
If women are made voters, would we get the real voice of 
the woman, — or that of her husband, brother, or priest? 
Whatever may be the case in that arena of contending par- 



424 WILLIAM PENN 

ties and bosses, in the circles of intelligence there is neither 
male nor female. The cultured gentleman knows that his 
individual preference — the real vote of his heart and mind 
— cannot be cast any more than that of his wife. Mean- 
while, as there is a vast difference between the voices that 
count and the voices that weigh, let women reflect that for 
the very reason of their exclusion from the ballot-counting 
machine they have been trained to use the influences that 
weigh, — insomuch that their appeals to reason and justice 
have outweighed the prejudices and traditions of ages, and 
cleared from our codes the barbarous statutes by which 
that sex was oppressed. 

In that long struggle the sentimentality was on man's 
side, the logic on woman's. Now that it is over, men recog- 
nize that those burdens were as heavy on them as on women. 
And now women are demonstrating that the agonies of 
war pierce their souls even more sharply than those of the 
soldiers, falling in dashing battles that arouse all the ani- 
mal in them, and leave no place for tender thoughts of the 
anguish tearing helpless hearts of women left in solitude. 
Last week, at the Peace Congress in New York, — the 
greatest ever held, — Tuesday morning was set apart for 
the addresses of women, and no other meeting of the three 
days was comparable to it for eloquence, exaltation, sub- 
limity. Forty-one years ago (February 10, 1866) Queen 
Victoria, after many years of mourning for the Prince, re- 
sumed her public functions by opening Parliament. The 
peers and peeresses gathered to welcome her with an un- 
precedented display ; fullest court-dress was worn, and it 
was said that every gem, necklace, coronet, decoration 
belonging to the nobility was in the House of Lords that 
day. After witnessing that scene, I wrote in my note-book : 
" For once I have seen the ideal legislative assembly, the 



WILLIAM PENN 425 

ancient Witenagemote, with both men and women in con- 
sultation." But that splendid scene of lords and ladies 
surrounding the Queen on her throne rose last week in my 
memory as an antique foreshadowing of the assembly of 
American Queens, with their coronets of culture, their 
brilliants of thought and feeling, and the daughters of song 
lifting us up to a height where we caught a vision of the 
beautiful world with which the genius of woman is in 
travail. 

For creeds written in poetry and song there is no scep- 
ticism, no heresy. Who cared that it was a Unitarian who 
wrote the prayer set to Handel's music with which thou- 
sands of voices opened the meeting ? 

O God, the darkness roll away, 
Which clouds the human soul, 

And let the bright, the perfect day- 
Speed onward to its goal. 

Or what Protestant was not happier for the hymn to the 
Madonna sung by the white-robed choir. Where the voice 
of the dove is heard, there is a harmony of hearts before 
which all hateful passions and prejudices flee away. Isaiah 
was there singing in the strains of Mendelssohn, — "How 
lovely are the messengers that preach us the gospel of 
Peace!" 

Thus these ladies from many regions had with finest art 
twined together our varied heartstrings, to create in that 
multitude one great heart, — also a sympathetic spirit of 
intelligence able to appreciate the words of wisdom, as well 
as the good tidings brought by these lovely messengers 
on the mountains of their special experience and hope. I 
listened with wonder at the calm reasoning, the learning, 
the eloquence carrying its point without rant or rhetoric, 
and asked myself why these ladies gave us clearer prac- 



426 WILLIAM PENN 

tical views than the official statesmen we had heard the 
day before. 

But at that opening session there was one very remark- 
able speech. As I was slowly moving out with the throng, 
a lady whom I did not know, intellectual in appearance, 
wearing the delegate's badge, heard me say to a friend 
that the last speech outweighed all the others, and she said 
with emotion, " I thought it worth more than all the others 
put together." It was a speech of the chairman, Andrew 
Carnegie. The remarkable character of it was this : he had 
been preceded by eminent official men, — a letter read 
from President Roosevelt, and addresses by the Secretary 
of State, the Governor of New York, the Mayor of New 
York City. Although the speeches of Secretary Root and 
Governor Hughes were full of thought, and at times elo- 
quent, there were in both one or two points that jarred 
upon the audience ; and President Roosevelt's letter con- 
tained a passage indicating that he had not mastered the 
subject: " It is ' righteousness that exalteth a nation,' and 
though normally peace is the handmaid of righteousness, 
yet if they are ever at odds it is righteousness whose 
cause we must espouse." The implication here is that every 
nation has the right to decide in a dispute that its own 
side is righteous, and its neighbour's side unrighteous, 
even if this one-sided decision involves breaking the peace. 
Chairman Carnegie, recognizing that this notion might be 
fatal to our cause, politely pointed out the fallacy ; and 
then, after applauding Roosevelt, referred to the speeches 
of the Secretary of State and the Governor, paying homage 
to them and crossing out their mistakes, — each having 
admitted in some way the admissibility of war, albeit de- 
plorable, in certain cases. Of course these cases were not 
indicated, for war can settle only which combatant is the 



WILLIAM PENN 427 

strongest, never which is right. This indefiniteness of the 
men in offices was significant. In each such utterance it 
was the official who spoke, and not the man. Each revealed 
the almost invisible yet unbreakable thread tied around 
his foot to keep him from moving too freely or too far from 
the official cage. But here was a man without any official 
thread to check his freedom. That veracity and gentle in- 
flexibility of Andrew Carnegie, planted on the principle 
that there can be no honour nor justice in a man or a 
nation being the judge in his own case, sounded the exact 
and true note for the whole congress. It was that perfect 
moral freedom that reached the heart of the unknown lady 
delegate who said to me, " I thought that speech worth 
more than all the others put together" ; and it was that same 
freedom that inspired her eloquent sisters who, next day, 
illustrated the inspiration and eloquence which can pro- 
ceed only from minds and hearts untrammelled by any 
official bonds. In other words, young ladies, you have, by 
reason of your exclusion from political orders, an advan- 
tage morally equal to that of the man whose fortune enables 
him to organize his freedom — and yours — into a new 
army of Peace, so potent that the armies of War begin to 
surrender. 

The wealth has nothing to do with this phenomenal 
direction of its power; that depends on character. The 
poorest can do his best, and a millionaire can do no more ; 
an angel can do no more than his best. But wealth has so 
usually been associated with luxurious selfishness, and, on 
the other hand, poverty has led to so much crime, that the 
wise have prayed with Agur, — " Give me neither poverty 
nor riches." In both there is peril to that freedom of soul 
characteristic of the disfranchised sex, and of that Com- 
moner of the International Nation whom France has made 



428 WILLIAM PENN 

a Commander of her Legion of Honour, — a decoration 
tliat no amount of wealth ever won or can win. 

Such freedom of the best self in each of us is the im- 
mediate jewel of our soul ; the aim of education is to refine 
it, polish it, and guard it from all tempters besetting the 
pathway of life. These perils are especially menacing for 
men to whom official prizes are offered in a political arena, 
where partisan service easily disguises itself as public ser- 
vice. Many sad historic examples illustrate Aristotle's 
warning about the liability of a virtuous man to corruption 
by possession of power, and Shakespeare's picture of proud 
man " dressed in a little brief authority " playing tricks 
that make angels weep, though mortals may laugh. 

The importance of this new department, "Peace and 
Public Service," deeply considered, would not be found in 
any theory, but in a condition. The enormous masses of 
people deposited or born in this country — paupers sud- 
denly become sovereigns, lords by mere birth — represent 
a many-handed power that can never be escaped. The 
single-handed aristocracy of intelligence cannot disfran- 
chise those swarming lords, and the intellectuals are 
placed between the alternatives of either catering to the 
mass or developing from it individuals who can represent 
the heart of the people enough to add the head. 

I remember well at a dinner of old Dickinsonians many 
years ago at Philadelphia, at which our beloved President 
Reed was present, that Dr. Crooks, discussing the time 
given in colleges to sports, said impressively, " The object 
of a college is to make leaders of men." These words 
I now remember as the last exhortation of a venerable 
teacher to the college with which he was so long and 
honourably connected. 

Popularity has various meanings. It is not very difficult 



WILLIAM PENN 429 

for a man to gain certain popularity by partisan services, or 
by paraded patriotism, — tbe cheapest of all virtues, only 
requiring a noisy tongue, — but a popularity based on the 
higher nature of the people, which has an instinct for sin- 
cerity, can be gained by a high-minded scholar, without 
compromise, provided there is in him the spirit of service 
and not of selfishness. Nevertheless, it is a very fine art, 
this of intellectual or moral or social leadership, and it 
cannot be effectual in the vast ways which ambition may 
suggest. In the great days of the English Parliament, over 
forty years ago, when Cobden and Bright and Palmerston 
and Gladstone and Disraeli were carrying England from 
the largely feudal to a democratic regime, I often attended 
in the House of Commons, and used to feel that one 
secret of the wonderful effectiveness of the speakers was 
the smaUness of the room. They could talk easily and 
audibly to each other, without any loudness, and the slight- 
est inflections, the subtlest tones, could be used, even ex- 
pressions of the eye might be felt. There it was that we 
heard great and true ideas and convictions. Occasionally 
I heard Gladstone speaking to thousands in public halls, 
and also John Bright and others, and the vast audiences 
were filled with enthusiasm ; but it was largely because 
they were returning to the people in rhetorical form the 
party prejudices of those people. Their real eloquence I now 
remember only in the little House of Commons. The " mea- 
sures of meal " spoken of in the parable are supposed to be 
each larger than a bushel, and it looks as if care had been 
taken not to make them more than three ; otherwise, per- 
haps, the leaven that the woman hid might have been 
weakened by over-expansion. 

The man whom Thomas Carlyle described in my hear- 
ing as " the cleanest intellect on this planet," Kalph Waldo 



430 WILLIAM PENN 

Emerson, told me in my youth that most of the religious 
polemics of that time, and theological troubles in churches, 
impressed him as resulting from a lack in pulpits of the 
art of putting things. He believed that a preacher could 
preach any doctrine whatever to any congregation in Bos- 
ton if he knew how to state his thought and feeling in the 
exactly right form, instead of the rhetorical and doctrinaire 
style which often passes for eloquence. Now, after a half 
century of experience as a public teacher, I remember that 
talk with Emerson in the campus at Cambridge as if 
Cardinal Wolsey had spoken again through the pen of 
Shakespeare, " Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambi- 
tion. By that sin fell the angels." 

The department we are founding is in a historic college, 
the first-born of Peace after the Revolution. The legisla- 
tive charter of the institution declares : " Whereas, after 
a long and bloody contest with a great and powerful king- 
dom, it has pleased Almighty God to restore to the United 
States of America the blessings of a general peace, whereby 
the good people of this State, relieved from the burthens 
of war, are placed in a condition to attend to useful arts, 
sciences, and literature. ... Be it therefore enacted, and 
is hereby enacted by the Representatives of the Freemen 
of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in General As- 
sembly met, and by the authority of the same. That there 
be erected, and hereby is erected and established, in the 
Borough of Carlisle, in the County of Cumberland, in this 
state, a College for the education of youth in the learned 
and foreign languages, the useful arts, sciences, and litera- 
ture." The purpose of the new department you have already 
heard outlined sufficiently for its inauguration. It is cer- 
tain, however, to grow as new occasions assign new tasks. 
For the present it is inevitable that studies of the methods 



WILLIAM PENN 431 

of terminating war shall be preeminent. I emphasize the 
word methods : whatever a man's creed, he should be just 
now in the Peace movement a methodist as distinguished 
from a sentimentalist. I have already said that the senti- 
ment of peace is ancient and universal, but that it has 
been practically inoperative because there has been no 
sociological James Watt to convert all that humanitarian 
steam into a world-renovating force. The Hague tribunal 
is only a first step towards the realization longed for by 
the Moral Nation distributed through the geographical 
nations, and it is significant that the man who wrote the 
life of " the maker of the steam-engine, out of which he 
had made fortune," should be now presenting to the world 
an engine for working the universal revolution necessary 
to render a true civilization possible. For so long as inter- 
national laws and usages recognize as a duty the slaughter 
by men of their fellow men, " civilization " is an illusion 
of provincial conceit. Mr. Carnegie's plan is to have a 
permanent international court, before which all nations 
shall agree to submit disputes they are unable to settle by 
negotiation. It is then to be determined that any nation 
which breaks the peace without having submitted its case 
to the tribunal shall be " boycotted," left without the pro- 
visions and supplies necessary for a war. In addition to 
this, in order to prevent swift attacks of one nation on 
another without notice, or outrages on weak and helpless 
tribes, there shall be selected from the armaments of the 
world a combination armament to act as the international 
police. 

It is to my mind one of the best features of Mr. Carne- 
gie's plan that he escapes the dilemma in which the simple 
sentiment of peace places the governments with regard 
to armaments. In our horror of war — justly called hell 



432 WILLIAM PENN 

— we naturally regard the armaments as machinery of man- 
slaughter ; but each of those armaments has grown out of 
immemorial ages of pre-human and tribal struggle ; man- 
ners, usages, and inheritances of all kinds have grown 
around them ; millions of young men have devoted their 
lives to military studies, and see in war opportunities for 
promotion and fame ; to abolish the armaments entirely 
would be to pauperize millions of families. Impossible! 
But as before our Civil War the American army and navy 
were practically coast-surveying, scientific, and exploring 
bodies, so now they can be turned to other purposes than 
those of destruction ; they can be utilized to keep the peace ; 
and that simply by their existence. All history shows that 
a refusal by any nation to submit to the consequences of 
an arbitration to which it has consented is extremely 
improbable ; and were there an international military and 
naval force organized to repress any violence consequent 
on such a refusal, it would be impossible. Even if in the 
last resort there were needed such united force of man- 
kind to prevent any one nation from breaking the peace 
in which the interests of all nations are involved, that would 
not be an act of war, but civilization's self-defence. Self- 
defence is not war, although the phrase is often used to 
disguise aggression. 

Mr. Carnegie, having recently occasion to write me a 
note, mentioned that a certain paragraph in one of my 
books expressed his own thought. The circumstances of 
this moment are too serious for me to hesitate to quote you 
that paragraph, especially as it really was suggested by 
the English author alluded to in it. It is as follows : — 

And now, at the end of my work, I offer yet a new plan 
for ending war, — namely, that the friends of peace and 
justice shall insist on a demand that every declaration of 



WILLIAM PENN 433 

war shall be regarded as a sentence of death by one 
people on another, and shall be made only after a full 
and formal judicial inquiry and trial, at which the accused 
people shall be fairly represented. This was suggested to 
me by my old friend Professor Newman, who remarked 
that no war in history had been preceded by a judicial trial 
of the issue. The meanest prisoner cannot be executed 
without a trial. A declaration of war is the most terrible 
of sentences ; it sentences a people to be slain and muti- 
lated, their women to be widowed, their children orphaned, 
their cities burned, their commerce destroyed. The real 
motives of every declaration of war are unavowed and 
unavowable ; let them be dragged into light. No war would 
ever occur after a fair judicial trial by a tribunal in any 
country open to its citizens. 

There can arise no important literature nor art, nor 
real freedom nor happiness among any people until they 
feel military uniform a livery, and see in every battlefield 
an inglorious arena of human degradation. 

There are signs that the era of this new conscience and 
consciousness is at hand. Every king, emperor, president 
is longing for peace ; commerce and prosperity feel their 
dependence on peace; there is a conjunction of happy 
omens, as of morning stars singing the old carol, " Peace 
on earth, good will to men," at the nativity of a new reli- 
gion. The Powers of darkness are moved. They are heard 
in high places, even in pulpits. While one of the wealth- 
iest business men lavishes his gold, frankincense, and 
myrrh on the infant cause in its manger, the rector of 
the wealthiest church — Trinity, New York — defends 
what he declares " the ancient, honourable, and necessary 
art of war." 'T is the voice of the surviving crusader who 
for two centuries devasted Palestine, where he heard Sinai 
thundering, " Thou shalt kill," and heard his Christ saying, 
" If thine enemy hunger starve him, if he thirst give him 



434 WILLIAM PENN 

molten lead." There must be a great deal of education 
yet before many are freed from the heritage of supersti- 
tions that sanctify the barbarisms of antiquity. It is in 
colleges that young eyes, which never looked on war, can yet 
learn to pierce its glamour, and to perceive that the fine 
courages and heroisms imagined in armed violence are 
qualities that can reach their flower and fruitage only 
when they rise to the victories of love and the achieve- 
ments of peace. You of the young generation may witness 
the advent " with observation" of this real civilization ; we 
aged ones must be satisfied with the substance of things 
hoped for ; and this day, as I am honoured by the oppor- 
tunity to assist in the foundation of the new Department, 
I have before me the vision of a noble temple of Peace 
clasping the circle of edifices, in which successive genera- 
tions of youth shall be equipped for the knightly services 
of souls consecrated to Peace. 

Implora pace^ O my friend from whom I now part. 
Entreat for peace not of deified thunderclouds, but of 
every man, woman, and child thou shalt meet. Do not 
merely offer the prayer " Give peace in our time," but do 
thy part to answer it ! Then, though the whole world be 
at strife, there shall be peace in thee. 

Farewell ! 



HYMN 

A Storm sped over sea and land ; 
Harvest and bloom are beaten low, 
And many a treasure on the strand 
Marks the wild track with loss and woe. 

Where in the solitude it searched 
A child hath hung his one harp string : 
The blast to melody is touched, 
Prelude to blessings it would bring. 

O heart, my heart, when clouds of fate 
Shroud thy fair sky and on thee beat. 
With childlike trust attuned wait. 
Win from each storm its music sweet ! 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

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A Discourse on the Life and Character of the Hon. William 
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438 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

by Moncure D. Conway, Minister of the Church. Pamphlet. 
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Virtue vs. Defeat : A Discourse, preached on November 9, 
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Unitarian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio, by Moncure D. Conway, 
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The Theater : A Discourse, delivered in the Unitarian Church, 
Cincinnati, 0., on June 7, 1857, by M. D. Conway, Minister. 
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Tracts for To-day. By M. D. Conway, Minister of the First 
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v/ East and West : An Inaugural Discourse, delivered in the 
First Congregational Church, Cincinnati, O., May 1, 1859, by 
M. D. Conway, Minister of the Church. Pamphlet. Cincinnati : 
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The Natural History of the Devil. By Rev. M. D. Conway. 
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The Dial : A Monthly Magazine for Literature, Philosophy, 
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^he Rejected Stone : or. Insurrection vs. Resurrection in 
America. By a Native of Virginia. 8vo, pp. 131. Boston: 
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The Golden Hour. By Moncure D. Conway. 8vo, pp. 160. 
Boston : Ticknor & Fields, 1862. 

Benjamin Banneker. The Negro Astronomer. Reprinted 
from the " Atlantic Monthly," by M. D. Conway. Pamphlet. 
London : Printed and Published for the Ladies London Eman- 
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Ordinary to Her Majesty, Victoria Press. 1864. 

The Service in Commemoration of William Johnson Fox, late 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 439 

M. P. for Oldham, and Minister at South Place, Finsbury : At 
Finsbury Chapel on Sunday morning, June 12, 1864, by M. D. 
Conway. London : Truebner & Co., 1864. 

Testimonies concerning Slavery. By M. D. Conway, a native 
of Virginia. Small 8vo, pp. 140. London : Chapman & Hall, 
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The Spiritual Serfdom of the Laity. By M. D. Conway. 
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Mazzini : A Discourse given in South Place Chapel, Finsbury, 
March 17, 1872. Pamphlet. Printed for the Author, 1872. 

Republican Superstitions. 8vo. London: Henry S. King & 
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In Memoriam. A Memorial Discourse in Honour of John 
Stuart Mill. With Hymns and Readings. South Place Chapel, 
Finsbury, Sunday, May 25, 1873. Pamphlet. 

David Friedrich Strauss. Commemorative Services at South 
Place Chapel, Finsbury, February 22, 1874, with a Discourse 
by M. D. Conway. Pamphlet. South Place, Finsbury, 1874. 

The Parting of the Ways : A Study on the Lives of Sterling 
and Maurice, by Moncure D. Conway. Pamphlet. London: 
Printed for the Author, South Place, Finsbury. 

The Sacred Anthology : A Book of Ethnical Scriptures. 
Collected and Edited by Moncure D. Conway. 8vo, pp. 479. 
London : Truebner & Co., 1874. New York : Henry Holt & Co. 

Revivalism : A Discourse delivered by Moncure D. Conway, 
Sunday, April 4, 1875. Pamphlet. South Place Chapel, Fins- 
bury. 

On Mythology. Address delivered at and published by the 
Royal Institution, London. Pamphlet. 

Our Cause and its Claims upon us : A Discourse delivered at 
South Place Chapel, Finsbury. Printed for Private Circulation. 
London : Printed by G. Leavy & Co. Pamphlet. 

Intellectual Suicide : A Discourse by Moncure D. Conway. 
Pamphlet. South Place Chapel, June 27, 1875. 

The First Love Again : A Discourse delivered in the Church 



440 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

of the Eedeemer, Cincinnati, Ohio, Nov. 28, 1875, on the 
occasion of the Re-union of the two societies, which had divided 
fifteen years previously, chiefly on the issue of Supernaturalism. 
Pamphlet. Reprinted from the " Cincinnati Daily Commercial." 
Revised by the Author. 

The Earthward Pilgrimage: or. How I left the World to 
Come for that which Is. Crown 8vo, pp. 406. London, 1876, 
Chatto & Windus. New York : Henry Holt & Co. 

Our Cause and its Accusers : A Discourse given at the Athe- 
naeum, Camden Road, June 11, 1876. Pamphlet. 

Idols and Ideals : With an Essay on Christianity. 8vo, 
pp. 137. London : Truebner & Co., 1877. New York : Henry 
Holt & Co. 

Alcestis in England : A Discourse delivered at South Place 
Chapel, Finsbury, January 21, 1877. Pamphlet. 

Unbelief : Its Nature, Cause, and Cure. A Discourse given 
at South Place Chapel, April 8, 1877. Pamphlet. 

Entering Society : A Discourse delivered at South Place 
Chapel, Finsbury, Sunday, 29th July, 1877. Paraphlet. 

The Religion of Children : A Discourse with Readings and 
Meditation. Given at South Place Chapel, October 21, 1877. 
Pamphlet. 

Report of a General Conference of Liberal Thinkers for the 
Discussion of Matters pertaining to the Religious Needs of our 
Time and the Method of Meeting Them. Published by Trueb- 
ner & Co. Pamphlet. 1878. 

The Peril of War : A Discourse delivered at South Place 
Chapel, March 31, 1878. London, South Place, Finsbury. 
Pamphlet. 

What is Religion ? (F. Max Mueller's First Hibbert Lecture.) 
A Discourse given at South Place Chapel, May 5, 1878. Lon- 
don, South Place, Finsbury. Pamphlet. 

Atheism: A Spectre. With Reading from Max Mueller's 
Sixth Hibbert Lecture. South Place Chapel, June 23, 1878. 
Pamphlet. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 441 

The Criminal's Ascension : A Discourse given March 2, 1879. 
Pamphlet. South Place Chapel. 

Demonology and Devil-Lore : 2 vols., royal 8vo. Illustrations. 
London, 1879, Chatto & Windus. New York: Henry Holt 
&Co. 

What is the Eeligion of Humanity ? A Discourse at South 
Place Chapel, May 16, 1880. Pamphlet. London, South Place 
Chapel. 

A Necklace of Stories. By Moncure D. Conway, with Illus- 
trations by W. J. Hennessy. Crown 8vo, pp. 206. 1880. Lon- 
don : Chatto & Windus. 

The Rising Generation : A Discourse, June 27, 1880. London, 
South Place, Finsbury. Pamphlet. 

The Voysey Case, from an Heretical Stand-Point. By Mon- 
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The Philosophy of Persecution. By Moncure D. Conway. 
No. 19, vol. i. Modern Sermons. Pamphlet. Manchester : John- 
son & Rawson, and J. Hey wood. London : H. Smart. Edin- 
burgh and London : Williams & Norgate. 

A Last Word : Spoken at the Athenasum, on the Closing of 
our Services there, June 27, 1880. London : Printed by Water- 
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Thomas Carlyle : A Memorial Discourse, delivered before 
the South Place Religious Society, February 13, 1881. London, 
South Place Chapel. Pamphlet. 

Thomas Carlyle. By Moncure D. Conway. Small 8vo, 
pp. 255. Illustrated. New York : Harper & Bros. London : 
Chatto & Windus, 1881. 

The Oath and Its Ethics : A discourse given before the South 
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11 South Place, Finsbury. Pamphlet. 

The Life and Death of Garfield : A Discourse before the 
South Place Religious Society, September 25, 1881. London, 
South Place, Finsbury. Pamphlet. 



442 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Wandering Jew. 8vo, pp. 292. London : Chatto & 
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Laureate Despair : A Discourse given at South Place Chapel, 
December 11, 1881. London, 11 South Place, Finsbury. 
Pamphlet. 

Lessons for the Day. Discourses delivered before the South 
Place Religious Society, South Place, Finsbury. 2 vols., 8vo, 
pp. 624. 1883. London: E. W. Allen. Manchester: John Hey- 
wood. 

Farewell Discourses : Delivered at South Place Chapel, 
Finsbury, London, 1884. 8vo, pp. 188. London : E. W. Allen, 
Ave Maria Lane. 

Travels in South Kensington : With Notes on Decorative 
Art and Architecture in England. Illustrated. New York: 
Harper & Bros., Franklin Square, 1882. 1 vol., pp. 234. 

Emerson at Home and Abroad. Small 8vo, pp. 309. Boston : 
James R. Osgood & Co., 1882. London: Truebner & Co., 1883. 

A Charge to be Kept at South Place : Farewell Service and 
Discourse delivered at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, London, 
May 17, 1885. Pamphlet. London : E. W. Allen, Ave Maria 
Lane, 1885. 

Pine and Palm : A Novel. By Moncure D. Conway. In 
two volumes. 1887. London : Chatto & Windus. 

Omitted Chapters of History: Disclosed in the Life and 
Papers of Edmund Randolph. Royal 8vo, pp. 401. New 
York : G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1888. 

George Washington and Mount Vernon: Being vol. iv of 
Memoirs of the Long Island Historical Society. 8vo, pp. 352. 
Brooklyn, 1889. Published by the Society. 

Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne : Great Writers Series. 1 vol., 
pp. 223. London, Melbourne, and New York : Walter Scott. 

George Washington's Rules of Civility, Traced to their 
Sources and Restored. Edited by Moncure D. Conway. Small 
8vo. London : Chatto & Windus, 1890. New York : United 
States Book Company. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 443 

Prisons of Air : A Novel. 8vo, pp. 270. New York : John 
W. Lovell Company, 1891. 

Barons of the Potomack and the Rappahannock. Svo. New 
York, 1892, The Grolier Club. 

The Life of Thomas Paine : With a History of his Literary, 
Political, and Religious Career in America, France, and Eng- 
land. 2 vols., royal Svo, pp. 489. New York : G. P. Putnam's 
Sons. 

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Four Discourses given in the Chapel in May and June, 1893. 
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The Writings of Thomas Paine : Collected and Edited by 
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Rise of the Dutch Republic : John Lothrop Motley. A new 
edition in three volumes, with a Biographical Introduction by 
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Bell & Sons, 1896. 

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Solomon and Solomonic Literature. By Moncure D. Conway. 
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Thomas Paine: (1737-1809) Et la Revolution dans les 
Deux Mondes. Traduit de 1' Anglais (de M. D. Conway) par 
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Autobiography, Memories, and Experiences of M. D. Conway, 
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My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East. By Moncure 
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444 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

1907. A revised publication of some of the sermons contained 
in the volumes, of the same title, published in 1883. As a pre- 
face to this reprint (later somewhat changed as printed) the 
author wrote these words, with which this volume may fitly 
close : — 

"I have found a personal significance in Dante Rossetti's 
mystical picture How they met themselves. In a lonely place 
the lovers meet themselves : in look and dress the two pairs, 
facing each other, are so identical that one distinguishes reality 
from wraith only by the Knight's hand seizing the hilt of his 
sword. 

" At the age of seventy-five, meeting myself in these lectures 
written at fifty, my hand flew to the hilt of my pen. But erect 
Fifty held the arm of stooping Seventy-five, and said, * If one 
of us must be run through, should it not be you ? ' In fact, this 
former lecturer proceeded to argue ingeniously that he is my 
more real self, and that I must sit at his feet rather than he at 
mine. My alter ego was conciliated by finding that my pen was 
not unsheathed to retract any ideas or principles in his utter- 
ances, but to improve them, to develop one or another point 
more fully. . . . 

"I am content also because I have arrived at an age when 
the shadows lengthen, and some of them might steal into the 
happy and hopeful time that collaborated with me in these 
pages were I to tamper with the text. Their most real value is 
likely to be less as ^Lessons for the Day ' than as lessons taught 
by the days as they passed during great and historic years." 









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